You submitted your painting to a juried art show. You were excited about it. You could already picture your painting hanging on the gallery wall. Maybe you even imagined yourself at the opening, glass of wine in hand.
Then the email arrives.
“Thank you for your submission. Unfortunately, your work was not selected.”
Ugh.
If you’ve just been rejected from an art show, competition, or gallery, here’s what I recommend: let yourself be disappointed, get clear about what happened, notice what you’re making it mean, consider what else might be true, and decide what you want to do next.
Listen: the jurors get to decide what goes into their exhibition. They don’t get to decide what your work means about you, and you don’t have to give them your authority.
So let’s walk through this with a made-up artist who represents most of us at one time or another. We’ll call her Veronica.
1. Let Yourself Be Disappointed
Veronica reads the email and feels absolutely crushed. She really wanted to be in this show.
But before she’s even finished reading, she’s already thinking about that one corner of the painting she should have fixed. Maybe she should have submitted something else. Maybe she should give up on juried shows altogether.
Hang on, Veronica.
Can we just be disappointed for a minute?
I know this sucks. Nobody likes being disappointed.
But every time you allow yourself to feel disappointed and take care of yourself while you feel it, you’re building evidence that you can handle it.
You wanted something. You didn’t get it. You feel terrible.
And you can handle feeling terrible.
Imagine for a second that it’s Christmas morning.
There’s a little girl who’s been dreaming for months about one of those giant wooden art sets, the kind with drawers that fold out and hundreds of colored pencils, markers, pastels, and paints.
She’s secretly written Santa five letters asking for it. She can barely sleep on Christmas Eve because she’s so excited.
Then Christmas morning comes.
She races downstairs to open her presents, and the one thing she wanted more than anything else isn’t there.
She’s crushed.
Now imagine that little girl sitting under the tree crying.
Would you walk over and say, “Oh, for God’s sake. Suck it up. You’ve got plenty of other toys. Stop being so dramatic.”
Absolutely not.
You’d sit down next to her, put your arm around her, and say, “Oh, honey. You really wanted that art set, didn’t you? I’m so sorry.”
And you’d let her cry.
You would not try to convince her that she shouldn’t be disappointed. You wouldn’t immediately start listing all the other presents she got.
You would listen to what she had to say. You would give her room to say what she needed to say.
You would just be with her.
So why is it that when you’re the one who’s feeling disappointed, you suddenly think you should be able to talk yourself out of it?
2. Get Clear About What Actually Happened
Okay, back to Veronica.
She submitted her painting to a juried exhibition.
The organizers had a limited number of spaces. They selected the paintings they wanted for the show.
Veronica’s painting wasn’t one of them.
That’s what happened.
But listen to how Veronica experiences it.
“They rejected me.”
And suddenly we’re talking about Veronica’s talent, her future, whether she’s a REAL artist, whether she should even bother entering another show for the rest of her life.
Ouch.
The jurors made a decision about which paintings would be in the exhibition.
They weren’t deciding whether Veronica was a legitimate artist.
So let’s try something.
Imagine you could get 100 people into a room and ask them to agree on what happened. I know, getting 100 people to agree on anything is practically impossible, but humor me.
What could all 100 agree on?
“I submitted a painting, and it wasn’t selected.”
Period.
That’s a fact. Nobody needs to interpret it. It’s what happened.
Now compare that with:
“They didn’t select my painting because I’m not good enough.”
Ah. Now that’s an interpretation.
And it’s important to recognize that.
3. Notice What You’re Making It Mean
Veronica has some theories about why she didn’t get in:
- “It’s that one corner of the painting that keeps bothering me.”
- “The jurors probably only choose established artists.”
- “Maybe my work isn’t as good as I thought.”
- “Actually, these competitions are probably a scam.”
And just like that, Veronica has come up with an entire explanation for something she has no way of knowing.
We don’t know if the jurors even noticed that corner of her painting. Maybe they did notice it and loved it!
But she’s already using their decision as evidence that something is wrong with her work.
So here’s something I’ve noticed from coaching hundreds of artists.
We don’t like feeling disappointed. Why? Because we’re human.
And to avoid it, we distract ourselves by trying to figure out what’s wrong with us, what’s wrong with our work, or what’s wrong with everybody else.
We’d rather second-guess everything we did leading up to the rejection for hours on end than feel disappointed for any amount of time.
And I get it. I really do. Feeling disappointed feels terrible.
But before you start solving problems that you don’t even know exist, ask yourself this:
What am I making this rejection mean?
I hate to tell you this, but sometimes we add a lot of color to something that was pretty black and white.
4. Consider What Else Might Be True
Veronica is convinced her painting wasn’t good enough.
Okay. What else might be true?
- Maybe there were hundreds of really good submissions and only thirty spaces.
- Maybe her painting wasn’t what the jurors were looking for.
- Maybe another painting was a better fit for this particular exhibition.
- Maybe they had to make concessions because of wall space.
Maybe she’ll never know.
And she doesn’t have to know.
What’s important here is that the first explanation her brain came up with isn’t necessarily true.
Now, I want to be very clear about something.
We never, ever want to gaslight ourselves. Hell no. There’s enough people trying to do that to us all day long. Do not become one of them to yourself.
Sometimes people really do behave badly. Sometimes competitions are poorly run. Sometimes you have legitimate reasons to question a decision.
If that’s what happened, you don’t need to convince yourself otherwise.
You can recognize that someone treated you badly and still decide what you want to do about it.
And if you don’t know why your painting wasn’t selected, you can let yourself not know.
You don’t have to invent an explanation that makes you feel terrible. Why would you?
But you don’t have to invent one that makes you feel better, either.
You can look at what you actually know and take your next best step.
5. Decide What You Want to Do Next
So, what does Veronica want to do now?
She still wishes she’d gotten into the show. That hasn’t changed.
Maybe she wants to submit the painting somewhere else.
Maybe she wants to research exhibitions that feature work similar to hers.
Maybe she wants feedback from someone whose judgment she respects.
Or maybe she decides she doesn’t want to enter this particular competition again. It wasn’t a good fit for her.
She gets to decide.
To help artists figure out what they want to do next, I often ask them to start here:
This is what I thought was going to happen. It didn’t happen that way. So who do I want to be today, now that I’m experiencing this?
You can want something badly and still be willing to experience the disappointment of not getting it.
There’s power in that.
You can submit to exhibitions knowing your work might not be selected.
You can approach galleries knowing they might say no.
You can put your paintings up for sale knowing somebody might decide, “Nope, not gonna buy it.”
And you can do all of that because you trust yourself to handle what happens next.
You trust yourself because you know you’ll always have your own back.
You don’t have to organize your entire art career around avoiding disappointment. In fact, I hope you don’t.
Think about how much more freedom you’d have if you weren’t afraid of hearing the word no.
Jurors get to decide what goes into their exhibition.
You get to decide what you want to do with your art.
Want Support Putting Your Work Out There?
You can intellectually understand all of this, but when the shit hits the fan, you want your default responses to work in your favor.
That’s exactly the kind of thing we practice in Growth Studio.
Artists in Growth Studio are making work, sharing it, showing it, and selling it. And we work through everything that comes up along the way, including the disappointment, uncertainty, and self-doubt that make putting your work out into the world feel so hard.
If you’d like support building that kind of self-trust while you pursue what you want for your art, join us in Growth Studio.
