An embarrassing admission

I’m embarrassed to admit this, but here goes.

As I described in a recent blog entry, I had the wonderful experience last week of seeing five of my paintings on display at the corporation in John Hancock Tower that had purchased them in May.

I was so proud and happy about that experience that I’ve been on a “high” ever since.

And yet … there’s still a juvenile part of me that emerged from hiding this morning.

It popped into my head in the shower just now, that part of me feels like sending a jpg of my paintings hanging in John Hancock Tower to the galleries, art consultants and museums that have rejected my applications to work with them in the past.

Now I feel silly about this, because I have been very fortunate throughout my professional career of 12 years as an exhibiting artist to have had many successes. It feels like I’m being ungrateful to take notice of the relatively few rejections that have come along the way.

But I can’t help it. Sometimes those rejections hurt, even when you realize later that a particular gallery wouldn’t have been a good fit for you, or that being turned down for something ended up leaving you open for another, even better opportunity.

And sometimes rejections stick in your craw. I still haven’t gotten over (although I realize I need to) the museum curator who wrote at length about how busy his schedule was, far too busy to “critique” my work (even though my application had asked him to consider it for exhibition, not critique).

Or the art consultant who said my work wasn’t saleable.

Anyway, there is that immature but human part of me that feels like contacting these people again to say, “You were WRONG!”

And an even more immature part that feels like adding “You loser!” But I won’t … I’m WAY too mature for that!