Saturday, March 6, 2010

Trip to San Francisco, and In Progress: Slough II

Taken from the train on the way out of town.

I might use this as a reference for something, even though it's rather blurry I can't decide whether that detracts from the image. It's a recycling depot just south of the San Francisco train station that I managed to glimpse when my camera was in my hand.

Thursday was spent going to galleries in the city, scouting the locations and examining the works they had on display. 49 Geary has a large collection of galleries featuring mid-career artists, and while the exhibits are interesting and definitely worth an entry of their own, the purpose of my visit was to find a gallery willing to represent me. One of the curatorial assistants was especially gracious about my questions and thanked me for looking at the work before asking whether they represented emerging artists- apparently a lot of people who are starting out use more of a "shotgun" approach and drop of submission packets without considering what sort of work the gallery handles. It's likely that I could have been a bit more subtle or planned approach, but many of the galleries on my list are not very forthcoming about how and when submissions are accepted, or if they'll even consider the work of someone just starting out. 

Generally, the reason for that is because the answer is no. I found a few galleries that do, in fact, accept emerging artists, and while they did generally state that they were not in a position to take risks in the current economy, none of them refused to take and look at my CD of work.

18"H by 24"W, on canvas. 
(click for enlargement) 

I've been working on this as a follow-up to a smaller painting, Slough. While the first was commited from a photographic reference with invented color, this newer painting is entirely invented and has been constantly rotated. It's interesting to me how much this new painting resembles the view from an airplane.


3 comments:

  1. Thanks for the post on Repaired Cliffs Lydia -
    It was based on some drawings I did so came together quicker than some other paintings.
    And way to go on approaching galleries, I am terrible at it myself so I commend your effort.

    Do you have a facebook profile? If so perhaps we can become "Facebook Friends", lol

    The word verification that came up was "suriest", I love that!

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  2. I am on facebook under my usual name, I sent a message to someone I thought was you but I have no idea really since they don't seem to have a public profile.

    I don't think that my gallery approach really garnered any attention but it's something I need to get used to since I seem to be very bad at being "connected" to the art community.

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  3. Hi Lydia--Great to see you have made contact with Marc; I think you are kindred spirits, aesthetically. And congrats on the courage and tenacity to approach galleries. That's harder than selling encyclopedias door-to-door. :^} Don't be discouraged...keep in mind that your work is worthy and strong, whether a gallery recognizes it at first or not.

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