Visual Arts and Crafts Professionals
Create visual concepts and forms through painting, drawing, carving, sculpting, modelling, printmaking and other media to communicate concepts and ideas.
Three weeks before the exhibition
You are a painter with a shared studio, preparing new work for a solo exhibition at the gallery in three weeks. It is Monday morning. You have six paintings finished, four to go and a gallery owner with views about what will sell. A commission request has also arrived. Time and energy are both short.
Choose what you would do. Then see what happens. There are often good reasons for each choice.
I love the bold new direction in your latest pieces, but my regular buyers like your landscapes. Could you include a few more of those? They'd sell more easily, and the show needs to work for the gallery.
Paint more landscapes in the old style, because the gallery needs to sell work and an exhibition that sells is a good start
The show sells well, but you feel flat. Making what is expected is a fair choice sometimes. The cost is that the new work waits.
Tell her the new direction is the only work you will show
You keep faith with your own work, but Clementine is uneasy about the risk and so are you. Standing firm is easier when you also know what the gallery needs.
Show her how the new work grows from the landscapes, offer a few that link the two and talk through what to hang where
Clementine sees the connection and hangs the two together. Buyers of the old work find the new work through it. You keep your direction and the gallery keeps its income.
I'd like a large painting of my late father's farm for our lounge room, based on this old photo. I'd want it ready in two weeks and I want it to look exactly like the photo.
Accept the commission as described, to keep a good client happy and because a commission is a sure sale for the studio
You rush the commission and the exhibition suffers. The painting looks like the photo but has little of you in it. Saying yes to everything can leave both pieces weaker.
Explain what you can make in the time, talk about how a painting differs from a copy and offer a later date
Dr Patel agrees to wait. You talk about his father and the farm, and the finished painting has feeling as well as likeness. A good commission is a conversation.
Decline, saying you don't take commissions based on photographs
It protects your studio time, but the answer is cold, and Dr Patel leaves hurt. A commission about someone's father deserves more care than a rule.
I saw your new piece and I think it looks a lot like the one I'm working on. I spent months on mine. Did you take the idea from me? I'm not accusing you, I just want to ask.
Get defensive and say that nobody owns an idea
Joss goes silent and the studio becomes tense. Ideas may be free, but trust between artists who share a space is not.
Look at both pieces together, be honest about where your inspiration came from and agree how to make yours clearly different
You realise you both drew on the same river photograph. You change your composition, and Joss adds a new element. Talking early kept a friendship and improved both works.
Apologise right away and promise to scrap your piece
Joss is surprised and relieved, but you have thrown away weeks of work over a misunderstanding. A calm look at the two pieces would have shown what actually needed changing.
How it went
By Friday you have three more paintings finished, a commission scheduled for later and a studio that still feels friendly. A visual artist has to be disciplined and stubborn about the work, and flexible about how it gets to the world. Does that mix of freedom and practicality attract you?
This is a simplified, fictional situation to help you explore. It is not professional instruction or a test of your ability.
Case study: The sculpture the town argued about
A fictional case set in a shared artists' studio in a regional town, with a gallery space at the front.
The situation
Kofi was a sculptor invited by his local council to make a work for a new riverside park. He proposed a tall, twisting shape in rusted steel that echoed the river's bends. At the first public meeting, some residents loved it. Others said it looked like scrap metal and wanted a statue of a local founder instead. A councillor asked whether Kofi would change the design. He had already spent weeks on drawings and a small model, and the steel supplier was waiting for an order.
What they did
Kofi did not defend the work or drop it. He asked the people who disliked it what they wanted the park to say. Most wanted it to feel like their town. He spent time with the local historical society, then offered a revised design that kept the shape but added cut outs in the steel showing the outlines of the river's old ferries and bridges. He showed the new model at a second meeting, explained what he had heard and what he would not change, and left time for questions.
How it turned out
Most residents were happier, though a few still preferred a statue. The sculpture was finished in the following months, and school groups began visiting to find the hidden shapes. Kofi said the process had been uncomfortable and he valued the finished work more because of it.
What would you do?
- What did Kofi keep and what did he change, and why?
- How would you feel if people criticised something you had made with care?
- What makes public art different from art made for a gallery?