I got the idea for this thread when I was writing Too much blue…

Everybody has experienced those moments in the struggle to get your art ‘out there’ when things don’t quite go the way you had planned – your fabulous new abstract gets hung upside down on opening night – you get a commission to paint a fishing boat (you WILL eat this week) when you turn up the next day with your little box of watercolours and a No 6 Sable you find fifty litres of red oxide and a paint scraper waiting for you. ( true – I kid you not )

This was a good one:

I was at a grand opening night of an exhibition when the excited gallery owner rushed across the room to tell me that he had just sold the largest, most expensive painting that I had on show, and wasn’t it all just fabulous and isn’t the show a huge success and would I like to meet the new owner. Of course I went to greet and meet armed with a glass of wine and a hugely self satisfied expression on my face.

A few minutes into conversation with the proud new (wealthy) owner he told me that the main reason he had bought my precious piece of groundbreaking, edge-cutting, state of the art piece of art was because it matched the new furniture he had bought for his living room.

The gallery owners’ face was a work of art in its own right, he was picturing his (substantial) commission leaving as quickly as it arrived. Somehow I kept my mouth shut, I did the only thing possible under those circumstances, I got very, very drunk…....now some of you are thinking ‘Oh, he should have told him to go forth and multiply’ and of course you are right.

But here is a moral question for you. At the time I was married with two young children, a cat, a dog, a hamster and a serious drinking habit to support (all gone now, save for the kids, who are now grown men). So should I have told him to stick his huge sum of money, or take the money and make everybody happy (except me)??!!!

Anybody got any more? We could collect them all and publish a book called ‘Stories From the Front (of the canvas)

You know what I mean……..k

I’m not a professional like you guys, so no gallery stories.
However, at one place I worked I did seven abstracts to represent the seven colleagues in the department at the time, and scattered them over a spare wall in the office area.
At first they caused a flurry of interest as everyone tried to identify themselves. For the next five years they were hardly mentioned apart from the odd “just remind me, what/who is that one meant to be?” or “are you still doing those funny paintings”?
The time came to move on and I was informed that “the paintings had grown on everyone, had become part of the place and would I be leaving them?”
I hadn’t really given it much thought, but of course ego got the better of me and with all the nonchalance I could muster, I cast a glance in their direction and nodded in a ‘I’ve enjoyed it here and they will act as a fitting legacy’ kind of way.
Later that day I found out the real reason for the sudden outbreak of art appreciation – a ‘manager’ had decided that if they were removed it would expose seven white patches in the yellowing paint on the wall and the estates budget would not cover any decorating for the remainder of the financial year.
At the end of the week I left with seven abstracts under my arm.
Some months later I bumped into an ex-colleague who admitted that the place didn’t seem the same without them [no mention of me!] – and no, the walls still hadn’t been painted.

Kafka – did you paint the boat….?

Mufa, your story reminds me of something very similar that happened to me.
(I think they should have just left the white spaces – extreme minimalist abstract !)

I got a commission to paint some large murals to decorate a local nightclub called the ‘Surf Bar’ – you can see why I got the work! – all went well, happy client, spectacular paintings, customers suitably entertained. The club lasted about two years before it went broke and was taken over by new owners. The murals were painted on panels so they could be removed, and the original club owner wanted to take them down and keep them.

The new owner disagreed and, after much legal arguing back and forth the paintings stayed where they were – until the closing night – when they all mysteriously ‘dissappeared’ – these ‘missing’ paintings have now achieved almost legendary status in the small holiday resort where the club is located and you regularly hear reports of them turning up decorating flats and living rooms all over town. Whenever one of them is ‘outed’ it vanishes once again for a few months and turns up somewhere else.
The new owners of the club are being driven slowly nuts by all this, but for most of the ‘locals’ it is a wonderful running gag. Even the external signs for the club (that I also painted with ‘kafka’ waves) have all been ‘disappeared’ !

Only just found this thread. Some excellent stories!!
I’m not exactly an exhibition veteran. One of my pieces was re-named accidentally on the works list at a group show last year.
Part of a set of ‘beakfaces’, it was renamed from ‘Beakface Skull’ to ‘Breakfat Skull’.
I saw it when I got to the opening and had to crack up laughing…sounded like an angry threat…’I’m gonna break your fat skull!’
I wonder if the buyer looks at it and thinks “I wonder why she gave it such an odd name?”

Could have been worse – might have been ‘Breakfast Skull’ – Firedrake…gothic cereal painter….

I got an image of a poor misguided teen goth sitting at the breakfast table, with his anxious mum hovering behing him – ‘Look, I’ve got you a lovely new bowl…..NOW will you eat your cornflakes.’

emoflakes..with free mascara

Seems like when it comes to having sense of humour there was only one stiff present.

Life and soul of the party…that is CLASSIC.

Aside from my brother running over to me at an opening to tell me, gleefully, that someone was talking about how weird my art was, I can’t think of anything more right now. Hopefully I’ll collect a few as I go along :)

How about a medium war story?

Here’s mine:
After using a combination of watercolour paper, ink pen and workable fixative spray quite happily for a while, I migrated to canvas. I had to find a new brand of ink pen as my old kind didn’t like drawing on the primed canvas surface.
Anyway, after drawing single feather strands, pores and wrinkles in a bird’s skin for about 8 hours, I sprayed it with fixative and went to get ready for bed. When I came back about 15 minutes later all my painstaking lines had blurred into a black pudding…I’d not tested my new medium with the fixative, and this combination had reacted badly and turned the pen strokes back into liquid. I think I screamed out loud…not sure.
So now I don’t use fixative, I’m just very careful!

ps. I once ran out of fixative when finishing off a design presentation to a engineering company – I had to use some hairspray borrowed from one of the girls in the office – It worked really well, but I got some very odd looks from the hairy-chested engineers when I pulled out a wonderfully perfumed set of drawings for them to look at.

Sometimes ignorance is bliss!

This was one of my first paid commissions. They asked did I draw nudes, so I say yes that fine. They paid up front and then I get the photograph.

I’ve blacked out the very detailed gynaecological aspects of this drawing, and as I remember in the photograph I worked from, she was also a great deal less attractive.

This picture still give me nightmares, and my signature is on it and everything.
I have since learnt to turn down some commissions.

Someone onced asked “Do you do nude paintings?”

I replied “No!!! Oil paintings involve toxic materials that are difficult to wash off so I prefer to keep my clothes on.”

I was once asked to paint a commissioned portrait of a very attractive young lady who just happened to have a cute freckle/mole. The girl’s mother who commissioned it went berserk because I included this minor imperfection that I thought only helped to accentuate the beauty of her face.

I refused to paint it out and the commission went unsold except for the price of materials I got upfront.