Behind the Scenes: How I Choose an Artist for the Roster

It was 2020, late evening, and I was scrolling Instagram the way most people scroll. Half-attention, thumb on autopilot, one image dissolving into the next. Then a painting by Sébastien Cheramy (read his full artist profile) stopped my thumb mid-motion.

I couldn't have told you why, not in that first second. It wasn't the palette, and it wasn't a subject, because there wasn't one to name. It was the gesture — the way the composition held tension without resolving it. The mark had been made once and then trusted, not corrected, not smoothed over for anyone's comfort.

I sat with that image longer than I sit with almost anything online. I zoomed in. I looked at the edges, where a stroke thinned out or doubled back on itself. Then I did what I do with every piece that reaches me that way: I made myself wait before reacting.

That is the part of this job nobody prepares you for. Before any reasoning, before any question of fit or market or roster space, something simpler happens first. A work either holds you or it doesn't. I've learned to trust that fraction of a second completely. I've also learned it is only the beginning of something longer. With Cheramy, it unfolded over weeks of returning to his work before I ever reached out.

I get somewhere between twenty and thirty submissions a month, between direct messages, emails, and portfolios passed along by people I trust. Most don't survive the first look — not because the work is bad, but because nothing in it asks me to stay a second longer. What follows is what actually happens after a piece does.

What I Look For — And What I Don't

The first thing I look for is coherence. Not a signature style, which can be copied or manufactured, but a voice. Something recognisable from one canvas to the next, even as the subject or palette shifts underneath it. Ludovic Dervillez's mark carries that quality. Show me a single cropped detail from one of his canvases, no context at all, and I would still know it was his.

The second thing is time. I want to see an artist who has been working at this for years. Refining a practice through repetition, doubt, and the slow accumulation of small decisions. Six months of confident output tells me very little about where a practice is heading. Five years of a hand getting quieter, more precise, tells me almost everything I need to know.

I also believe in rarity as a value in its own right, not just a marketing line. I would rather represent eight or nine artists closely than forty at arm's length. A small roster means I can speak specifically about every artist in it, in detail, and mean every word.

Here is what I deliberately don't look at: follower counts, engagement numbers, whether a particular style happens to be trending this season. Farrah Lee's market presence grew slowly, built on the physical strength of the work itself rather than a single viral moment online. That sequence — work first, attention later — matters more to me than any outcome it eventually produces.

Trends pass through a market and leave almost nothing behind. A coherent, committed practice is different. Benka's ongoing exploration of technology and mark-making keeps generating new work worth looking at, years after the trend that first surrounded it has faded.

The Process, Concretely

Discovery rarely follows a single channel, and I've stopped expecting it to. Some artists come through recommendations. Another artist, a curator, someone whose eye I trust, pointing me toward a practice I hadn't yet seen for myself. Others submit directly, through email or the gallery's site, with a body of work and an exhibition history attached.

What I'm looking for in any submission is not polish. It's evidence of a sustained practice, enough images across enough time to see how the work has actually moved. Not just where it happens to sit today.

There is no fixed timeline between a first contact and a decision, and I've made peace with that. Sometimes it's obvious quickly, the way Cheramy's work was obvious to me almost immediately, even before I'd written him a single word. Other times I sit with a practice for months, quietly watching how it develops before I say anything to the artist at all.

I say no far more often than I say yes, and I try to be honest about why. Sometimes the work simply doesn't align with what we curate — strong work, wrong context. Sometimes an artist's goals and the gallery's don't match: a short-term push against what I see as a long-term relationship. Sometimes it comes down to vision. Where I see a practice heading over several years, and where the artist sees it going, don't always overlap enough to build something together.

None of those reasons make an artist's work weaker, and I want to be clear about that. They mean the fit isn't right here, at this gallery, at this moment. I'd rather say that plainly, early, than let a mismatch drag on politely for months.

Saying no is not a rejection of the work. It's an acknowledgment that representation only functions when both sides are building toward the same thing. I've watched galleries sign artists on enthusiasm alone, without asking whether the relationship could actually hold. It rarely ends well for either side.

What Representation Actually Means

Adding an artist to the roster isn't a transaction, and I try never to treat it like one. It's a commitment I intend to keep for years. Through strong stretches and slow ones, through work that sells quickly and work that takes far longer to find its collector.

Curation carries a kind of responsibility that's easy to underestimate from the outside. The moment I place an artist's work alongside Dervillez's or Benka's, I am shaping how collectors read that work. Its company, its implied context, the standard it's being measured against. That's not a decision I take lightly, and it's a large part of why I move slowly, sometimes frustratingly so.

It's also why the roster will stay small on purpose, not by accident of growth. Every name I add changes the shape of the whole thing, quietly, the way one more voice changes a conversation. I would rather grow this gallery through the depth of a few relationships than the breadth of a long, thin list.

I think about it less like a catalogue and more like a household. Eight or nine artists, each occupying real space in how I think, what I show, who I introduce to whom. Adding a tenth is never just arithmetic. It changes how the other nine are seen, standing next to someone new.

If You're an Artist, or a Collector

If you're an artist thinking about submitting your work, send me the fullest picture you can put together. A cohesive body of work, your exhibition history, and a clear sense of where your practice has been heading over time. I read everything that comes in, even when volume means I can't respond to all of it personally.

Take the delay personally as little as you can. A slow answer, or no answer yet, usually means I'm still watching, not that I've already decided.

If you're a collector, here's how I'd read any gallery's roster, not only mine: look for coherence across the artists represented, not simply quantity. A tight, considered roster usually tells you more about a gallery's judgment, and its taste, than a long one ever will.

I still think about that Instagram scroll in 2020 — the second before I even knew why a painting had stopped me cold. Most of what I do now, submission after submission, is trying to give that instinct enough time, and enough scrutiny, to be worth trusting.