Total Art Soul - for artists

Good morning,

I've read a lot of articles on what NOT to do when having a meeting with a gallery owner, but nowhere have I found HOW to get an appointment with one.

How does one approach a gallery to get your work shown? A letter requesting an appointment? Will a gallery charge an initial fee to represent you (like an administrative fee)?

Some insights to this would be very helpful. I received an email yesterday from a gallery in Florida and am very wary of their "offer" to represent me for a large fee. I'd rather have a good local gallery that I can work with.

My experience is that if you email, most of them will be ignored. The best results I had was to put my paintings in the car. I would then plan a route of certain gallery and go in and request an appointment. If at all possible, or if I was asked, I could go and get my sample paintings from the car and get to see someone there and then. I've had a bit of success with this.

I'm saying all this assuming you've done your homework and you know the gallery will sell your kind of work. I would suggest that you make phonecalls. You'll have to ask them if they are looking to represent any new artists. A lot of them will say no.

If they say yes, then request an appointment. Make sure that when you go, you take business cards and your best work. This should be cohesive, ie not your experimental stuff and should look like it would be part of a series. Galleries like you to have a definite signature with your work because this makes it easier for them to sell it.

Also make sure that you have a price list of the prices you will want. The gallery will put between 40 to 60% on top of those but don't sell yourself short.

They will not charge you a fee. If they ask for this, then you walk away. It is not the normal way for galleries to operate and I have never paid anything. They are there to represent you and will hopefully make a nice amount of money from your work. An additional fee means they are not a great gallery.

Hope this helps.

Thank you for the input! I'm at that point that I need to start pursuing more gallery exposure and wasn't sure how to approach it. I lucked out on my first gallery and did exactly as you said, but it wasn't planned out. Will keep you informed how my experiences unfold.

Yes, definitely keep us posted! I wish you lots of luck.

Thank you so much for answering my question. That helps to weed out the "offers to represent" <---for a fee, of course, and the legitimate galleries.

We have some wonderful galleries in our area, and the gossip is that they will only show whatever group they belong to's work. I need to get past the firmly entrenched art clique and I want to be fully prepared to offer my best works in a gallery whose style suits my own.

As things progress, I'll post how it goes.

All the best,
Jen

I have had little experience, and no bites. One thing I did learn was that you really have to go with what they carry. Even though art is supposed to unique to the artist, many gallery owners only like specific styles of art. Home work is everything, visit them on your own to see what colors schemes they like and the types of art they carry. If you are more of a unique artist, then your best bet is to do research online, and find artists with similar color schemes and styles to your art and find out where they have their art showcased.