About the artist gallery relationship

In the aftermath of my recent experience with a gallery I have come to some realizations on the gallery artist relationship. I thought I'd share them with you.

For me a significant part of my art making involves interacting with people either in the virtual world or the real world. My interactions come from multiple venues like my website, or Facebook, my blog and other blogs, ecards, school and university talks and shows. I don't consider this marketing. I consider it my relationship with my world and it's part of making my art. It's part of being alive.

Much of my work is about how we connect with each other. How we choose to interact and how these relationships grow is what will matter. A new culture is emerging. A culture that is questioning concepts of authority, hierarchy, institutions - all relationships. Just look around it's everywhere. And so the questions are about how we restructure our institutions, how we restructure our workplace and our work relationships. These are some difficult but necessary questions. And they can't be answered through mandates nor through trying to carry forward an old paradigm that holds fear and mistrust.

As we move forward and evolve we will expose the under girding of a broken system because surely we can feel the untruths. If we truly care about the welfare of one another, we'll try to create a way that is mutually beneficial and ethical for each. But we can only do this through honest and open dialogue not through a hierarchical system of mandates.

Until then I can live comfortably in the shifting gray zone. And truth be told I prefer transparency and expect it from my galleries, my viewers, collectors, other artists.