Artwork Rejection
You've done the work. You created your artwork and submitted it to a juried art show or gallery in the hope of showing off your artwork to the masses. The wait begins to see if you get the thumbs up or the thumb down.
Out of Your Control vs In Your Control
(Warning: Please note that I'm not going to sugarcoat this article.)
There are some things within the artist's control when submitting artwork to a gallery for selection, but probably much more frustrating is that there are more things that ARE NOT within the artist's control. And even more confusing and/or frustrating, the reasons for rejection that are out of your control you may never know about.
At Open Space Arts (OSA) at Stonebridge, we use a "Jury Committee" which is a group of artists with a variety of art backgrounds that review all art submissions. While we cannot speak for every juried art show in the world, there are common features that are taken into consideration when populating a gallery for specific art shows.
Here are some things that the gallery has total control over:
1. To be blunt - your artwork may look great in person, but the image of it that the jury sees - well, sucks. Actually this happens a lot and the artist does have control over taking the photo of it. Do NOT include background in your art photos. Take a GREAT picture and CROP out the background. And quite frankly, because of techie things, the image may not translate well from image to projected when the jury is doing their thing.
2. How large the gallery space is vs. the number of pieces submitted, also vs the size of the pieces submitted. Say a gallery has room for 100 large pieces and they receive 350 pieces of large art to jury. Do the math, that's a lot of rejected art.
3. IF the gallery is looking for a theme and the artwork submitted doesn't fit that theme, it has to be cut. Although OSA doesn't want to necessarily stick to a theme for each art show, occasionally the title of the show does dictate a "theme". Say the show was "Summer Spotlight on Art" and artists submit art that has snow, ice, fall colors and the like. Although the art might be scrumptious, the time of year along with 'what might sell best at this show' would mean that these pieces may do better if submitted for a fall or winter seasonal show. Again, look at Number 2, something has to go.
4. Best of the best vs diversity. I can speak for OSA on this topic as we jury art for our shows, we strive for the BEST of the art submitted. We want the highest quality of art from Prince William County artists for every show we have juried. That takes precedence. We realize that some artists only do abstracts, some only do large works, some artists do photography, and others do realism. We compare an artist's submissions against other pieces that same artist submitted (often taking the best out of that artist's entries) as well as the entire shows submissions.
There are galleries that are all about featuring every style of visual art known to man, perhaps to appeal to the diversity of potential gallery visitors. And in essence, there is nothing wrong with that. Again, space over the number of pieces means cutting out some great art.
5. Although I am on the Jury Committee for OSA, I do like to think we are being fair in our selections. We vote on pieces and we do tend to try to be inclusive. We each have our own opinions about what we like and do not like in art and this is true for any jurist or jury committee at any gallery. I believe that a committee vote works better than a single person selecting work for a show. Our committee members are objective in their decisions, seeking the quality of the artwork submitted as our priority. A single jurist may or may not be as objective - I've seen it at some galleries as you probably have.
A Rejected Art Piece
I'm going to show you an example of one of the oddities in art jurying. This is a photograph of a piece I painted and recently submitted to the OSA Hispanic Heritage Art Celebration show that is now open from September 21 to October 16, 2022. This piece was rejected from the Call for Art.
Pinata by Donna Liguria, 2022 Acrylic on Canvas
Art Crafts vs Fine Art
I do think that an understanding should be made here about the difference between fine art and craft art. See this article Difference Between Craft and Fine Art
At OSA, we have turned away craft art. It is also worth remembering that the OSA Committee, made up of Prince William Art Society members, needs to also work under the guidelines of our gallery sponsors - meaning that the artwork on display must be FINE ART of the best quality.
What is in the Artist's Control?
1. Follow the rules, the directions, the process. Proofread you submission BEFORE you submit it. You know the saying, "Dot your 'i's and cross your 't's"? When a gallery has A LOT of artists submitting hundreds of pieces of art, what is really unfortunate is when an artist DID NOT FOLLOW DIRECTIONS. Print out the directions so that it is easier for you to follow the checklist of things to do!
...I could stop this list at this point because that is simply where most mistakes happen...
With everything on the internet, on YouTube, on this blog or elsewhere, a simple search and doing your homework will help you understand the art business world and its expectations. It is a business and an artist wants to sell art as much as the gallery does. If a gallery has requirements, it is UP TO YOU TO MEET THOSE REQUIREMENTS. Otherwise, maybe a juried art show might not be what you should do if you can't take rejection.
If I come across as harsh on this, I'm not going to apologize. I've had artwork rejected too. It happens and it probably has to you too. Nonetheless, here are some areas where mistakes can and do happen when submitting art to galleries to be juried:
2. Bad photos.
3. Missing information.
4. Unfinished artwork. (This covers a lot of territory from under-drawing showing to unfinished edges.)
5. Badly framed or matted and framed artwork, or unprofessionally packaged art prints.
6. Improperly wired artwork. (We have received artwork with no way to hang it.)
7. Not original artwork. (Unless you are Walt Disney, don't submit Mickey Mouse art.)
8. Incomplete, unprofessional artist bio.
9. Submitting only one entry. (Could be a sort of an alert that you may be a beginner and you may be overlooked for a more aggressive entrant or perceived as larger body of work artist.)
10. Failure in not submitting your images in the requested format. Also note, if asked to ATTACH the image is different than EMBEDDING the artwork in the email. Often, although perhaps unknown to you, there are good reasons for specific requests. When dealing with hundreds (or more) pieces of art, each gallery has their own methods of doing things.
11. Failure to submit art on time, to deliver art on time or failure to respond to an email for more information on time.
12. Failure to not submit your best artwork.
13. Poorly constructed compositions, proportions, technical flaws. This is also known as not executed well. (We have seen artwork where the subject matter is quite good, but the piece's background is not. Or the human's hands are out of proportion to the rest of the portrait.)
14. The uniqueness of your art. How does your artwork stand out, what makes it so far superior to another landscape or similar subject matter?
15. Submitting the same pieces over and over again. (The expectation is that you are growing as an artist and have much more artwork to show.)
16. Your attitude in taking rejection is under your control. You can take it as a learning experience or you can always say, 'They hate my art. My art is no good. I hate this gallery." OR you could simply ask where you could improve.
More Reading on the Art Jury Process
I have written blog posts on this subject before, both on the Prince William Art Society website and on this blog, which you could use the search feature for (look to the top right --->) but I have highlighted a few links here that you may find helpful:
I am going to add though, an artwork rejection is NEVER a rejection of the artist. Every single person, every artist is appreciated and valued. We all must start somewhere in our art journey. You should ALWAYS, always, keep trying to improve, learn from your mistakes, and enter those art spaces that will work best for your body of work and where you are on your journey.
At Open Space Arts, we are considering a "workshop" to discuss why a piece got rejected where the artist might bring in a piece and have someone discuss possible factors. Keep an eye out for that if we are able to get it on the schedule.
Your blog comments are always welcome. See the small No Comments (or Comments) link below this post to add yours. Remember though, comments are monitored...
Update July 8, 2023: Recently, 2 PWAS friends and I paid for and entered a local Call for Art and NONE of us got any artwork in. And if I say so myself, those 2 are even better artists than I am! I've never seen anything of theirs that are not great pieces of art. Nonetheless, in reading the REJECTION letter that was sent out, the discussion was how the one juror had such a hard time selecting out of the 255 entries that she whittled down to 55 to show. So you see, we ALL can get rejected at some point.
Local Art: Visit us at Stonebridge Open Space Arts at 15000 Potomac Town Center, Woodbridge, VA - Open Wed to Sat 12-7 and Sun 12-5
The Prince William Art Society is a 50-year-old non-profit art group in PWC for the appreciation of fine art throughout the county and Northern Virginia.
Want to know how to get involved at OSA? If you are an artist (18 or older) living in Prince William County, or a are a member of a PWC art group, you are welcome to get on our next art show's emailing list. Send it to us, OR come by the gallery to find out more.
Want to join PWAS? Go to https://www.princewilliamartsociety.com/membership
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