She Said YES (But Her Dog Had Said Yes First)

I spent years thinking my work wasn’t good enough for a gallery. Then one day I got a bit of courage, drove to Santa Fe, mailed prints of my best work to four galleries, and showed up on a long weekend hoping for a miracle. What happened in the last gallery I visited, the one I almost didn’t walk into, is a story I’ve never forgotten. There was a woman in a chartreuse dress with a little white dog named Coco. And what that afternoon taught me about showing up before you feel ready is the lesson I keep coming back to more than any other. 

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She Said YES (But Her Dog Had Said Yes First)

I spent years and years thinking my work wasn’t good enough.

Not good enough for a gallery. Not good enough to be seen alongside artists I admired. Not good enough yet.

Back then what I was striving for was simple. Get into a gallery. That was the dream. That was the thing I kept pushing toward, kept making the work better and better trying to reach.

Then one day I got a bit of courage and I was tired of waiting.

 

 

The Trip to Santa Fe

So I drove to Santa Fe. I made beautiful prints of some of my best work and mailed them ahead to four galleries. Then I showed up on a long weekend hoping, praying for a miracle.

Santa Fe felt like the right place. The galleries on Canyon Road. The caliber of work being shown there. If I could get into one of those galleries, I thought, everything would change.

One of the four galleries I chose was way out of my league.

Super high ceilings. Beautiful stone floors. Artists hanging on those walls I could only dream of standing next to. I genuinely don’t know what possessed me to send my prints there. But for some reason I did it anyway.

And then I avoided going in the entire trip.

I saved it for the very last day. The gallery that would be the hardest rejection to take. The one that would hurt the most. I walked past it more than once during the weekend and kept moving.

About an hour before I had to start driving home, I finally walked in.

 

The Woman in the Chartreuse Dress

I was so nervous I could barely get the words out.

I walked up to the receptionist behind this giant stone desk and asked if they’d received the yellow envelope I’d mailed ahead for the owner. She shook her head. She didn’t remember any envelope. And besides, the owner wasn’t even in today.

I exhaled in relief and turned to leave.

I was almost out the door, literally pushing it open to leave, when I heard a voice from somewhere behind me. 

“Are you Nicholas Wilton?”

I stopped in my tracks and slowly turned around.

An older woman had stepped out from behind a frosted glass partition. She was wearing a wickedly chartreuse dress. Her face was kind of stern, not particularly friendly. And cradled in her arms was this  little white puffy dog.

I was so nervous. But I managed to say yes.

And just as I did, that little dog squiggled free and excitedly paddled across the stone floor toward me and started jumping up on my legs.

I love dogs. And I was honestly so grateful for this distraction. So I leaned down and picked her up and she started licking my face. The owner watched from a distance. Her stern face softened just slightly. And then I heard her say, almost to herself, “That’s funny. Coco never likes anybody new.”

 

She Said Yes

The owner had received my prints.

There was one painting in particular she thought was really strong. She wanted to know if it was available.

Here’s where I have to be honest about something slightly embarrassing…

I had sold that painting years earlier because it was the best thing I’d ever made. But I didn’t want to blow this opportunity. So, like a dummy, I said yes of course it was available. I figured I’d just paint another one as soon as I got home. How hard could that be?

Very hard, as it turned out.

When I got home I tried to recreate it. But the pressure was too much. The stakes were too high. That painting had come from somewhere I couldn’t find on demand. I struggled and struggled and eventually sent them this poor man’s version of the original.

They rejected it.

 

What I’ve Never Forgotten

Here’s the part of this story that I keep coming back to. The reason I’m telling it to you now.

For a couple of weeks, just for asking, just for walking through a door I had absolutely no business walking through, I got into the best gallery in Santa Fe. Possibly hanging next to artists who had been working decades longer than me. Way out of my league. Closer than I’d ever thought possible to my dream. Way earlier than I’d ever imagined.

Just for asking.

She didn’t say yes to my technique. It wasn’t my composition or my color theory that opened that door. She said yes to a man in shorts and a t-shirt who showed up at a gallery he had no business being in. She said yes to someone who just asked and presumed he was qualified.

And her dog liked me. I’m fairly certain Coco had something to do with it.

 

The Lesson I Keep Coming Back To

Your work will never be seen by the right person unless you dare to put it where they might find it.

That’s it. That’s the whole thing.

You don’t know what they’re looking for. You don’t know which version of yourself, the painter, the dog lover, the nervous one standing in the middle of a gallery in shorts, is the thing that’s going to open the door. That part is not your business.

Your only job is to ask. To show up. To walk through the door you have no business walking through.

Most of us are waiting until we’re ready. Until the work is good enough. Until we feel qualified. Until some internal threshold is crossed that gives us permission to step into the rooms we actually want to be in.

But readiness doesn’t arrive before the asking. It arrives, if it arrives at all, from the other side of having asked. From having walked through the door already. From having been in the room.

The gallery owner didn’t say yes because I was ready. She said yes because I showed up.

 

What Showing Up Actually Looks Like

I want to be practical about this for a moment because I think the lesson can sound easier than it is.

Showing up before you feel ready is genuinely uncomfortable. That whole trip to Santa Fe, I was running on something that felt much more like desperation than courage. The printing and mailing ahead, the long drive, the weekend of walking past that one gallery and not going in. None of it felt brave in the moment. It felt terrifying.

But here’s what I’ve learned since then about that particular kind of fear.

The fear of rejection from the thing you want most is almost always bigger than the rejection itself. The gallery could have said no and I would have driven home and kept making work. The no wouldn’t have changed anything fundamental. But the yes, even the temporary yes, even the yes that eventually became a no, changed something in me permanently.

It told me I was closer than I thought.

It told me the rooms I wanted to be in were more accessible than I’d believed.

It told me that asking was the variable I’d been underestimating all along.

 

Your Only Job Is to Ask

So wherever you are right now in your creative life, whatever door feels like it’s out of your league, whatever room you’ve been walking past and not going into, I want to ask you something directly.

What would happen if you just asked?

Not when you’re ready. Not when the work is better. Not when you feel qualified. Now. As you are. With what you have.

You don’t know what they’re looking for. You don’t know which version of you is going to open the door. You don’t know if there’s a Coco on the other side waiting to paddle across a stone floor and make a stern woman smile.

That part is not your business.

Your only job is to walk through the door you have no business walking through.

And if you do, you just might get your miracle.

Just know it probably won’t look anything like you planned.

This November I’m heading back to Santa Fe for the Art2Life retreat. If you’re interested in learning more or want to join us, click here. 

 

Now It’s Your Turn

Have you ever talked yourself out of something because you didn’t feel ready or qualified? Or have you ever walked through a door you had no business walking through and been surprised by what happened?

Share it in the comments below. I’d genuinely love to hear your version of the Santa Fe story.