Picture of my studio in 2010, working on paintings for the show Toxic Mimics in Antwerp. Some of this work was also shown at a space in Kortrijk, Belgium.
I had a studio visit with a museum director around this time (wearing a scarf in my hot studio) who said I should get a bigger studio and have assistants. "Paul McCarthy has forklift drivers, I was just there."
Impossible conversations with unqualified (often racist, openly classist) socialites got really, really, old.
I was only ever able to do any of this because of credit cards. I do intellectually understand the value of a "showroom floor", but this was a work space.
The idea people don't know or accept the difference, is part of the larger, insurmountable class problem central to any art experience I've had.
I remember a difficult studio visit with a younger artist at their studio not long after this, where I tried to explain this perceptual "problem" to them based on the way their studio looked, and the way they would be perceived by people who just came in on a private jet.
I still cringe thinking about this and the effect it had on him.