I Wish They'd Told me this in art school

This page is under construction. It's posted here half finished as there's still some useful information here. I think, if you're serious about becoming a commercial artist, you'll need to know some of this. 

If you have any questions about any of this or would like to reach out, please don't hesitate to do so, I'd love to chat. You can reach me on the social media links on the homepage, or by emailing t.hoten.esq@gmail.com

Socials are probably more reliable. Instagram is a good way to reach me. 

Notes on "I wish they told me this in art school"

There’s several things I wish they’d told me in art school. 

Why should you listen to me?

For around half a decade, I’ve been working in a commercial art gallery. Functionally, the point of the business is to sell artwork. Of course there’s more to it, but for the purposes of this discussion, the point is to acquire artwork from artists, and then sell it to clients. In my role, I deal with every step of the journey from when the art is made to when it’s at the buyer’s house. There’s quite a few steps, details, and moving parts to this process that I don’t think I’d have known about without having worked in this role for at least a while. 

I studied Fine Art at the University of East London, spent a year messing around reading, writing, talking, listening, making things, trying different ways of making things. In my second year, I moved into mixed media work with a focus on woodwork and writing, but held a resistance toward studying anything really contemporary, preferring to read about the early 1900s. Third year, I refined my practice even more, working on abstract woodwork sculpture, inspired by Picasso’s collage phase. I was recruited to a few special projects, and was commissioned to design and oversee production of a set of awards for an advertising company. I earned a First, with a high scoring dissertation. Then I had a few different jobs, and wound up at this gallery. So that’s my background, and after over five years here, I hope my advice is valuable. 

The assumption in this article is that you want to sell your work through an independent gallery, and that you’re in an early stage of your practice. To keep things simple, we’re going to assume you’re a painter. We’ll go into other examples later, but this is supposed to be a quick guide. The limitations of this article and advice are that it’s focused on my personal professional experiences at this gallery. Other galleries may work differently, your experience may vary. Consigning your work through a gallery is not the only way to become a successful artist. If you're looking for Etsy advice or something without a gallery, I don't have enough experience to confidently offer advice. Keep it somewhere in your mind that this is just one person’s experiences. 

It’s not all creating Art

You have to do your admin. Being a professional artist, in the sense that you want it to be your main, or at least a source of income, means that you’ll have to do some of the side of work that might excite you less. There’s paperwork. First and foremost, you’ll need to catalogue your own work. Make a list, or even better, make a spreadsheet. A gallery will ask you for what we call a consignment form. This is essentially just that spreadsheet. Apprehensive about spreadsheets? Get a google account and make a google sheet. You’ll need to catalogue the titles, sizes, year of creation, medium, and price. This could be your price, or the sale price, but you’ll need to specify which one you’ve noted. Assume you only have control over one of these numbers, not both. 

You’ll want it to be a list where each entry looks something like:

The Painting I Made, 50 x 75cm, Oil on Canvas, 2023, Artist Price: £525

You will need to take photos of your work and catalogue them too. Keep in mind that most clients and galleries will view your art through the computer monitor, or a tablet or phone. For detailed, textured work, higher resolution photos may be needed. Close-ups can be useful too. Save these as JPEGs, and title them similarly to your spreadsheet entries, or bare minimum, title them with the name of the artwork. All of this is as much for your sake as the gallery’s. If you don’t know your own body of work, how will the gallery? 

Pay attention to deadlines. The gallery will want to advertise your work ahead of its arrival, and ahead of the exhibition opening. Many galleries will have a specific delivery window. Pay attention to these deadlines, and meet them. If you don’t, you’re putting yourself at a disadvantage, and making the gallery staff’s job harder. 

If you want to be a professional artist, you must act professionally. 

Why critical theory matters 

(puts your own work in context - someone has done everything before, what's special about your practice). Art history is such a valuable tool for your practise. It'll help shape your work, help you learn from the mistakes and successes of those before you. If you're a plein air painter and you paint boats, who else did that, why, when, who were they, what's similar between you two and what differences are there that you can lean into and celebrate? Find your thing, your niche. 

Refine your practice

Limit yourself, but consider it a way of narrowing down. If you have two distinct practices, mention one. Still life paintings and abstract sculpture? Consider if you’re a painter who sculpts, or a sculptor who paints. Consider what sets your work apart from others. Is it tied to a sense of place? Is it your signature great big globs of paint? Is it a recurring motif? Ideally, you'll be at a point where people can pick your work out of a lineup. 

CV, Statement, Portfolio

You'll want a short version and a long one. Short one, aim for like 200 words, and have a backup that's more like 500. You can always chop this up and re-edit it to cater to specific things, just like your CV. What goes on your Artist CV? Well, anything like shows, collaborations, public stuff. Got one painting in a cafe? It's on the CV. Got a couple of peers to put some work up in a community centre? It's on the CV. You don't need to detail it, just state that it's a thing you did, and the year that you did it. You can refine it as you build experience. There's a saying - the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, the second best time is now. Portfolio, similarly, you should have a full catalogue of your work ready to go, but you can trim it and create different short snappy brief folios. If you do multiple styles of work and you're applying for an exhibition that's only relevant to half of your work, they might not need to know about the other half. 

Approaching a Gallery

Frankly, get used to 'no' and apply for fucking everything. You will need to be ok with the idea that you may not be a good fit. This could come down to something as simple as one staff member’s personal tastes in artwork. Some galleries may have absolute no-go’s when it comes to the work they exhibit. I would never want to exhibit a rainbow paint drip picture of a highland cow. I like cows, but I feel like I’ve seen thousands of rainbow highland cows. 

Many galleries will theme their exhibitions. If you’re applying with geometric abstract Malevich style work while they’re about to have a show called ‘Garden Delights’, consider that they may not be thinking about geometry right now. Mixed exhibitions are common around summer and the end of the year, and these are good opportunities for galleries to try new and different work, meaning it’s a good opportunity for you to exhibit there. 

Research the gallery. Is your work a good fit for the place? Each gallery has its own style, vibe, client base, personal preferences. Look at the artists they’re exhibiting, advertising. Look at their past and upcoming exhibitions. Are you a traditional still life painter? Does the gallery do a lot of edgy disney characters with tattoos? Are you a photographer, but the gallery don’t show any other photographers? Are you a mixed media beach scene painter? Does the gallery seem to specialise in landscapes? Consider what they’re already doing, and how you might fit into that. 

The gallery I work for operates under a Sale Or Return business model. If it sells, great. If it doesn’t it goes back to the artist. Some galleries may buy your stock, but once they do that, they might sell it for 4x as much as they paid you. Or it might sit in storage for a decade. 

There are galleries that are specifically geared toward newer artists. Some of these may charge a fee to apply or to exhibit. Weigh up if you want to do that. They can be wonderful opportunities to build your CV, show your work, and meet other artists. 

Go to as many gallery private views as you can. They're less private than they sound and they're a good opportunity to initiate conversations with people. 

When actually approaching a gallery wether in person or online, I would suggest, after researching it, you just ask what the process is for applying, as well as how the business model works for the artist. This will show that even if you're new to it all, you care and are serious about it enough to learn a little about this side of the arts sector.

How much?

It can be daunting to put a price on your own artwork. A useful way to begin would be to consider an hourly wage. Note how long this painting took you. How many hours have you spent on this painting, and how many hours have you spent building these skills and this practise? Try figuring out your hourly wage, and calculate how much you’d like to earn from the sale. 

It’s important to remember that your opinion might differ from the gallery’s. There is a definite element of the gallery’s expectations and perceptions of the sellability of your work. This might be measured against public perception of the pricing of art. Unfortunately, the public tends to undervalue work, and assume that bigger equals more expensive. It feels like you’re getting more art for your money if the painting is bigger, even if the work is small and intricate and highly detailed, larger works will usually have that association of larger price. 

You must also keep in mind that the gallery needs to make some financial profit from the sale of your work. They will take a commission, a percentage of the retail price. This will vary from place to place, some will include tax, some won’t, some will have a higher percentage, some will have lower. A 50% take isn’t uncommon at all. It’s also easier to use as an example. Lets say you want £100 from the sale of your painting. The gallery would add their %, plus tax, so the painting would sell in the gallery for £220. Lets say you recently sold a painting privately for £500. That may be the maximum that painting could ever sell for. If it does sell for that, you’d receive around £230. 

You’ll need to stay consistent with your pricing. Your prices can go up, but they can’t really go down. Lets say you sell something that’s 50 x 75cm for £750. Then you hit a dry spell, so you consider bringing the prices down. The person who just bought your painting for £750 sees a new painting the same size for £650. They’re going to feel like the work was valued at £650 all along. If the price goes up to £950, they might think that your work could increase in price any moment, and that now is a good time to buy more before it goes up further. 

Make a website. Squarespace, Google site, Shopify, whatever. Have some sort of online presence.

Wrapping and storage

Lets keep assuming you’re a painter. You’ll need to safely store your work. If someone’s bringing me a canvas to exhibit and the corners are discoloured or the canvas is warped, it won’t exactly help the professional relationship. Taking care of your work shows you value it, care for it, and believe in it. Store your canvases upright, face to face, and back to back, stacked like library books. This is how they’ll be stored at the gallery while not on display. Wrap them in something. If it’s bubble wrap, bubbles on the outside, always, no exceptions. They could be wrapped in paper, card, anything that’s not cumbersome or annoying for the gallery. 

There have been times that an artist has shipped work to me, and it’s been covered in small, uniform circles that are embossed into the varnish layer, or directly into the acrylic. This is why you put the bubbles on the outside. This wasn’t the first time this had happened, and I’ve been able to make some minor repairs to bring the work up to a sellable point, but the focus of my job isn’t to repair damaged work. If it needs to happen, I’d hope that most gallery folks could do something to make small fixes, but it shouldn’t be their job. 

It shouldn’t be the gallery’s job to affix display hardware to your work. In the case of canvases, make sure that once the gallery receives it, they’re able to hang it. Add a string to the back. Add D-Rings, Strap hangers, add something, or the gallery will have to do it. I do this a lot and while I don’t really mind it, it really should be the artist’s job to finish their art, which includes adding the ability to display it. A gallery could refuse your work if they don’t have a way to exhibit it. 

Make your own canvases - buy from Hobbycraft to quickly devalue your work. Framing, get what you pay for. Add on framing cost to artist price. With framing, it can be expensive, but you get what you pay for in terms of quality and longevity. If you're in college or university, find and befriend your studio tech team, and ask them to teach you how to stretch your own canvases. It's a valuable skill, and its why they're there. Doesn't even have to be canvas, actually. It can be linen, some sort of fabric as long as it behaves itself. I saw one once painted on a stretched old tshirt. 

Stretcher bars can be expensive, or least the cost can add up quick, but there's often ways to get them. At the gallery, we have a small collection of various sizes in tip top condition, and we don't know what to do with them. Often we'll unpick and roll painting for clients who don't want to pay exorbitant shipping fees, then we're left with an empty canvas stretcher frame. Same goes for our picture framer's workshop. 

If you're looking for canvas stretcher bar frames, I recommend reaching out to local galleries and picture framer shops to enquire if they have any of these. They might already have a plan for them, but there's a decent chance you can pick up some free bars from these places. 

Things artists have done that have annoyed me

Sometimes, even some of my favourite artists to work with do little things that annoy me. Here's some examples: 

Circumvented the gallery in sales. If it's for sale at the gallery, please don't take it away and sell it directly. There should be something in the contract about that. 

Given paintings without info. Wow I love this painting but you haven't told me what it's called, how much it is, what it's made from, or any info at all.

Not sending images, saying "You can just take photos". Sure I can, but so can the artist. Take your own photos, you know how best to represent your work in photo form. It'll also save me a bunch of time. 

Telling me you're sending one thing then sending me something totally different. There's a good chance we've been advertising the work you said you'd give us. Feels like ordering pasta at a restaurant but getting cake. Cake is great, but I've been telling all my friends how amazing this pasta is going to be. I'm wearing my pasta outfit and listening to music about pasta. 

Delivering artwork to a closed shop. Personally, I love my job, but I don't live there. If the gallery is closed, it's because we're out living our lives. Can't deliver to an empty shop.

OLDER DRAFT: 

General Advice for Newer Artists

From the subjective point of view of a commercial gallery supervisor

So you’re starting out. You make things. You want to be able to financially support yourself via the things you make. You’re not in the privileged position of having an existing financial support network (No rich parents).

Here’s a few random bits of advice.

Do your admin. For all that is good on this green earth, do your admin. Do it in a way that works for you, but just do it. By this I mean document your work. Take decent photos of it, save them as JPEGs, title those JPEGs, and make a list of your work. Even better, make a spreadsheet. What is it called, what’s it made of, how big is it, how much money would you like for it. The benefit of this admin is not just so you have a firm and easily digestible grasp of your own body of work, but it means that gallery people can then easily add that info to their own systems easily. I’ve had artists hand me ten paintings, and a post-it with the titles of seven of them. Now I have to spend my day chasing the rest of that information.

Find your niche. Do you paint landscapes? That’s great, I wish I could paint landscapes. Find what it is about your landscapes that makes them YOURS. What sets them apart from any other generic painting. This could be your colour palette, it could be that there’s always a dandelion, it could be that you focus on one particular part of the country, it could be that you have extraordinarily thick paint strokes. You’ll want to get to a point where, for example, if someone sees your work in one place, then again in another place, they’ll be able to say ‘oh, that’s that person who does those ______ landscapes!’ You’ve got to refine your work, meaning find what makes it yours. This is what, on paper (or canvas), practising art at university is for.

Go to Things. Galleries have open evenings, museums have exhibitions, some cafes have evening drawing clubs, some pubs have drink-n-draws, some art supply shops have clubs. Go to things. Even if you’ve been at work all day, it can be a wonderful thing to just go to these events. Talk to the people, listen to your contemporaries, and remember that when we lift each other up, we all rise. Support other artists, if not financially, then as a friend, colleague, fellow artist. Through these events, you’ll hear about other events, other things other artists are doing.

Apply to everything. Expect some places to say no. Expect some places to say nothing at all. Refine your ‘elevator pitch’. You need a one or two paragraph email, and some select images of your work. Refine this, and send it out into the world. It needs to be quick and easy to take in all the information. If a gallery is receiving 50 applications a week, they’ll look at the pictures first. Don’t overexplain.

Develop a thick skin. People, especially the public, can be harsh. When it’s face-to-face, there’s a Britishness to things where people will let you down gently. But when the public see things, they’ll often just let their unfiltered opinions fly out. Some of these are brutal. There have been times in the gallery where someone’s looked at my favourite painting that year, and have said “well that’s f**king ugly.” without giving it more than a 4 second look.