The past three years, Kiowa Gallery in Alpine, Texas has represented me and sold my paintings. Many, many of my paintings. We've been such a good match, I can barely keep finished work in my studio. Okay, admittedly, this is a great problem for an artist to have, and I'm hugely appreciative of Kiowa for creating it. I seldom hear a discouraging word from that quarter, and I hope our relationship goes on as long as deer and antelope play under the cloudy skies I love to paint.
 
Trouble is, I paint professionally, almost daily. I plan to do so for many moons. This ambition dictates showing as much work as I can to the largest audience I can stir up. Frankly, Alpine isn't the crossroads of North America. Plus, Kiowa shows only regional landscapes. Sometimes I like to paint water. Green things. People. Animals. I've known for a year or more that I need a second outlet for my paintings, and I've worked toward that goal. Painted diligently. Updated my brochure and lovely portfolio. Asked around about galleries. Checked their websites. Asked collectors. Read all that's printed about approaching a gallery. I've done my homework.
 
I narrowed my quest to two Texas galleries, names that kept coming up. Kiowa recommended both as good fits for my work. (Yes, I've been upfront with my present gallery about expanding to a second one. My goodness, why wouldn't I be honest about it? Manners, manners, manners.)  Since fall and winter are my busiest times for showing and selling, the logical time to make a move on Prospective Gallery #1 was late winter. Which would be now.

See how methodically I've approached this? An artist/gallery relationship can last a lifetime. It's a marriage.

I hope you're impressed with my master plan to woo a new gallery.
Because that's not at all the way I did it.

Artists, like normal humans, get sick. I like to think I can either ignore or beat anything that hits me. It's an ugly arrogance of mine. Life laughs at our arrogances. In late November, a rare genetic trait, huge bony growths under the tongue known as tori mounted an insurrection against my body. These key lime-sized knobs rudely started breaking up and cutting their way through my skin. This happened the week of Alpine's ArtWalk/Gallery Night, so I ignored the pain as long as I could.
 
The short version of my subsequent medical saga involves a systemic infection in bone, four rounds of antibiotics, four months of mind-shattering pain and fever interspersed with holidays, a painting vacation, two major art shows, myriad art-related cocktail parties and receptions, and several pastels produced while subsisting on chocolate Slim Fast shakes. My husband will tell you exactly how bad it got. I understand he was pursuing plans to sell me on Ebay. Finally, I agreed to an extensive surgery in Midland to remove the excess bone on each side of my mandible.  A very possible side effect of the surgery would be severing the nerve to my tongue, which could cause permanent loss of taste and speech.  ( By then, nothing I said was pleasant anyway, so this potential complication might have actually enhanced my starting value on Ebay.)

Gallery #1 is in Midland. (Which is why I placed Midland Gallery at the top of my list. Midland is home to people who buy art like I buy grapefruit. Also, I'd rather show my art somewhere I don't mind traveling to, and besides having roots in Midland, its only three hours from my studio.) Somehow, my feverish mind related gallery representation with oral surgery. Brilliantly,  I decided that the day of surgery would be a good time to inform #1 Gallery of my existence. By now, my husband wasn't arguing with me about anything, so he did nothing to dissuade me from my mission.

I emailed the gallery owner, whose name and email address I'd filched off his webpage. Instead of politely giving this busy and very important person the option of setting aside time for an appointment, if he was even interested in interviewing a new artist, I told him when I'd be coming.  This lapse in manners I deemed necessary because I had only a twenty-minute window between the time the gallery opened and my surgical appointment. (This actually made sense to me, at the time.)  I did not receive an answering email. I took this as a "yes". When I realized that the oral surgeon, who I had thus far only seen in Odessa, would do the surgery in his Midland office a few doors down from Midland Gallery, I took it as a sign from God— on both counts. (Location, location, location.) 

Once an artist gains an appointment to a prospective gallery, everything I've read suggests the artist take half a dozen pieces representative of one's art. I packaged up one pastel landscape. At 38" long, I think I figured he might be able to visually break that one up into several smaller paintings. I forgot to take my meticulously updated portfolio. Forgot to take even one of my lovely and professional-looking brochures. Didn't even think to take a printed artist's bio. We arrived ten minutes early, parked and waited for the gallery doors to open. Then, painting in hand, I walked in and introduced myself.

I take a lot of pride in my appearance. For this occasion, I had agonized over what outfit would still look okay splattered with blood. The two and a half hour surgery would produce a lot of blood, I was told. I felt a little tacky in my thrift shop t-shirt, but not so tacky I was willing to sacrifice a nice blouse. Also, I'd been warned not to wear jewelry into surgery. I feel a little naked without jewelry, but my neck was so swollen, it was probably better not to call attention to my face anyway. I remember sticking out my hand to gallery owner Mike Crume. "I'm Lindy Severns," I said, not smiling because I physically couldn't. I forgot to mention to you that I was still in the afterthroes of an allergic reaction to the antiseptic mouthwash I'd been prescribed right before Trappings of Texas. My tongue, which was by then merely brown and blistered to twice its normal size, had been black all through the Trappings weekend festivites. My throat was no longer closed, so I could breathe normally again as I feverishly introduced myself.

I showed Mike my painting. He showed me his framing area in the back. We danced around details a bit, talked prices and commissions.  Thinking he might object to black-tongued artists, I assured him I was a nice person who was having a bad day. I didn't mention surgical terror, but later, he said he saw it in my eyes. I was glad to hear this, because that meant he hadn't paid too much attention to the tacky shirt and lack of jewelry. Jim came in to herd me down to the oral surgeon. Mike kept the single painting and asked for half a dozen more by the end of the month. "We can handle anything else through email," he assured me.

My body was producing a lot of happy endophins by then, which helped see me through the surgery. When I woke up, I was thinking not about bone amputations but about pastel landscapes. I had my first hamburger yesterday. Two weeks after surgery,  I can taste, and I can speak, more normally than when I had a mouth full of bony mushrooms. I've delivered three more paintings and a stack of brochures to Midland Gallery. I'll take the rest when I go for my next surgical follow-up early in April. I sent Sanjay Reddi, MD, DDS a box of my oversized fine art greeting cards with a note of thanks. Because of him and his staff, I have my life back.

Mike Crume could've turned me away. And/or I might be speechless now. I might sell well in Midland. I might not. The tori might grow back. That's simply life. Even the best planning takes you only so far in life. My Daddy, Coach Dave Cook once coached a group of gangly young basketball players into a State Championship for Lubbock High School. He used to tell me you can only make a basket if you shoot for the hoop. No guarantees of success, no sure shots.. But if you don't shoot?
 
Not shooting is what failure is.

Here's the first painting I took to Midland Gallery. It's of sunset on the last day of the wonderful Big Bend painting vacation we took over the holidays, so it means something special to me and to Jim.  I did it while experiencing fever, pain, and the joy painting brings me.  God in his wisdom gave me the gift of art right along with those wretched tori. That's life.



A TERLINGUA SUNSET   18" x 38" pastel on archival paper   by Lindy C Severns 2009 
available at MIDLAND GALLERY  4610 N  Garfield  Midland, Texas   www.midlandgallery.com