[Michal Tkachenko]

I’ve just finished Chapter 2 and watched the pricing video and taken to heart what Crista advised about treating clients specially. I have a few scenarios that I have come up with in my own career that have stumped me to this day and have wondered if anyone had any thoughts on them. (I must still be wondering if I made the right decision).

Scenerio 1:
At the beginning of my career when I had just got my first gallery to represent me in the city I lived in, the gallery owner coincidentally also organised a charity art auction every year (which I was invited to take part in via a totally different person). I began annually showing in the auction up to the maximum pieces allowed. (Thankfully, it let me set the minimum bid, gave me 50% of the profits and gave me a tax deductible receipt for the other 50%). It became a very important show for me because I had become a full time artist and relied on the sales which were very good at this auction and often led to more sales in the gallery. I had a big client who would bid on and win my biggest piece every year who became a reliable collector. One year he bid on a piece of mine against another person and they both drove the price up. My collector won my piece. The next day he saw a piece of mine in the gallery he liked better (which was actually already sold). He told the gallery owner that the work he had bid and won was not my best work and he wanted to trade it for the piece in the gallery. At this point the gallery owner called me to explain everything that had happened and was incensed with her client/my collector. It was now too late to find the other buyer at the auction and she didn’t like how he was treating my work like a library book, just return it and getting a newer one at no cost. But she left the final decision with me and gave me his phone number! Or maybe I already had it. I can’t remember. I really didn’t know what to do. I relied on the money to live but he was a good client, I would lose the sale from the auction all together and didn’t have anything to give him in return. Should I go along with his demands? Or do I call him on what the gallery owner had thought was outrageous?

At the time I decided to not refund him for the work (the charity would lose out as well), told him I wasn’t a library to return pieces he no longer liked for a new one at no extra cost, but would gladly paint him a new piece in the same series as the one that was sold in the gallery for my normal market value price. I never heard from him again and he never bought my work again.

Now years later, I still go back to that scenario and I believe I would do things differently now. I would cater (to a point) to someone who had bought a collection of my work. I don’t really know if I would have had the power to refund something sold at a charity, but if I did, I now would. I would also might hint that this was a favour but that I was pleased he liked my work and supported me in my early years. For all I know he has burned all my work!

Or should I have let the gallery owner/auction organiser deal with it?

 

Scenario 2:
I lived in Canada years ago when I started my career and my work sold in Western Canada and my prices slowly went up. I have good representation there and I am loyal to my gallery. But 12 years ago I moved to the UK and began as a nobody artist again. It took me ages to realise the market was totally different there and what sold well in Canada didn’t sell well there at all. My prices had crept up in Canada and I found that if I priced equivalently in the UK market, no one was interested. They seemed outrageously high for a beginning artist.  So I actually had to price at starting prices again. Luckily Western Canada and London, UK are far apart and I don’t price on my website. I totally agree with having one price across the board, as Crista said, but I had to somehow build up to that in the UK by starting lower there too. The result was I finally got a gallery’s attention (that is another story with a big question mark) and they agreed to the equivalent Canadian prices. But before that I had some very good deals in my open studios.

So the question is, WWCD (What Would Crista Do) in this scenario?

 

Scenario 3:

Okay, I am going for it…I have always believed and been told the best way to get representation with a gallery is to have one of their artists recommend you. This happened for me. In fact, the top selling artist in the gallery was one of the other artists in my studio building and she liked my work. She recommended the gallery make a studio visit to my studio. After all, they came regularly to hers. I painted a series for them to show off what I did. They would arrange a date, then run out of time in her studio and tell me they would come another time. This happened a few times. Then the work that I had done for them started to be sent to different shows in Canada and I was left with the left overs. I just gave up and thought they weren’t really interested. Then suddenly I was moving back to Canada after 12 years and I wanted representation so badly in London before I left that I walked into the gallery and asked why they hadn’t come to my studio? Hey, I had nothing to lose, I figured. They apologise profusely and said they were just so busy all the time with art fairs but that they would come. So at the last minute it worked out. I framed up an entirely different series for them and had the dregs of the series I had painted for them there as well. They took it all. I don’t know if that is good or not. I would have liked them to have the really saleable and best pieces in the series. And now I am in Canada…with a different commitment that hasn’t allowed me to paint for a year…panicking that I am going to lose my London representation. What is the question here? What did I do wrong originally? They did say when they finally saw my work in person that it didn’t look like it did on line.

I guess the whole reason I took this course is to discover the mind of the gallery owner/dealer. That is where I feel I am stumped and at a standstill. I want to progress to the next level of gallery and my career, but don’t know quite what the best and most professional approach is to take is.

[Michal Tkachenko]

I quite like your first and last name, but it is up to you!