My Local Problem

Any Gallery that sold 97 images for me, can badmouth me, link me, walk my dogs and take my mother in law for a date.

Link with him and if it doesn't prove profitable in 30 days dump him off your connections, he wont know ... unless you tell him up-front. I'm always cleaning my connections.

i would go with franks idea, though i do wonder why he wasn't to link wit you. i don't much care for linked in and only signed on to find someone. even if they sell for you, it's never a good thing that anyone bad mouths you - it means they want to remove you from the competition by saying bad things, so your stuck with only them. so in some ways its really not a good thing. actually in any way. they need you as much as you need them.

---Mike Savad

I'm sorry you're having to deal with this, Martha. Life is too short to waste it on jerks and bullies.

It may be that he just let LinkedIn connect to his email contacts and auto-email everyone, vs sending a personal invitation deliberately just to you. I haven't played around in Linked In for a while, but I know they had something similar as part of their sign-up process once upon a time. You could either just ignore the invitation, or follow Frank's good advice. If you don't want to link up with him, don't. (He's not worth the hassle.)

In the meantime, keep creating new art and if you have some free time, learn more about how to market your art online. There is a lot of good advice here in the forums. No one else has a say in whether or not you are an artist, that is your calling and your decision only. He can't drive you out of art. If you fear your local opportunities may suffer, then work on building your own opportunities, connections and audience online - the world is a big place and out there he's just a small (and stinky) fish. YOU are the artist.

Be better tham him...Kill him with kindness, send him a Thank You card for all the sales. Better yet, paint him one! ...and do what Frank said.

I ignore people I dont want to link with. Delete the invite if you do not want it and then move on to marketing your own work which seems to be working for you already

Thanks to all for your advice and kind words. Actually most of my sales were not in that gallery. I just go there because of my club. Really, he is scary and he knows it. I think that I will just ignore his linked in request.

oh, well if he's not that important, then no, i would just ignore him or block him some how.

---Mike Savad