How to Commission Abstract Art That Feels Personal: Valeria on Trust, Colour, and the Space Between
By Chloe, Curator of Soul Portrait
The collectors I find myself thinking about longest are the ones who told me something true rather than something precise.
I have been wanting to ask Valeria about commissioning for a long time. Her paintings feel like places you can actually enter, which made me curious about what she needs from a collector before she will even pick up a brush. What follows is our conversation about how to commission abstract art in a way that leaves room for something honest to happen.
When someone comes to you with a commission, what is the very first thing you are listening for?
I am listening for the feeling they cannot quite finish saying. They will often start with practical things: the wall size, a colour they like, a room they describe very carefully. And I let them talk, because somewhere in all of that there is usually one sentence that is quieter than the rest, and that is the sentence the painting ends up being about.
I am not looking for a full brief. I am looking for an emotional address. Once I have that, I know which world I am painting my way into.
You use that phrase, emotional address, and I love it. But I imagine some people arrive with the opposite: a very precise visual instruction. How do you work with that?
With care and with honesty. A very specific visual instruction is usually a person protecting themselves from surprise, which I completely understand. But if someone tells me to make a blue painting with gold accents, I will ask them what blue feels like in their life. Is it the stillness before a difficult conversation? The colour of a window they looked through as a child? That distinction is everything. The paint colour I mix will be technically the same, but what it carries in the room will be completely different.
The collectors I find myself thinking about longest are the ones who told me something true rather than something precise.
Soul Portrait keeps the finished piece a surprise until it arrives. That is a lot to ask of someone who has just shared something deeply personal. How do you think about the no-preview approach from where you sit?
Honestly, it is the part of the process I feel most grateful for. When I know no one is waiting for a photograph of a work in progress, I am free to make the wrong painting first, which is almost always necessary. I might spend a week going in one direction, understand that it is not right, and start again. That time is not delay. It is the painting finding out what it needs to be.
A preview would freeze that process. The collector would react to something unfinished, and I would be tempted to protect the version they saw rather than follow the work somewhere more honest. The surprise is not a quirk. It is what makes it possible to give them something real.
When you think about the practical terms of a commission, what do you wish more collectors understood before they begin?
That clarity in the practical terms is not the opposite of poetry. It is what protects the poetry. Size, medium, price, delivery, what happens if shipping crosses borders: all of that should be agreed before anyone picks up a brush. When those things are uncertain, they become a kind of noise underneath the whole process, and the artist cannot work freely inside that noise.
I also think it is worth understanding that abstract art is not graphic design. There is no revision loop that leads to a better painting. There is only the painting, and the intelligence the artist brings to it, and the trust required to let that be enough.
Last question, and it is the one I always want to ask: what do you hope a person feels the first time they are alone with a piece you painted for them?
I hope they feel recognised without being explained. That is the specific thing I am trying to do. Not to illustrate their story back to them, but to make something that carries the weight of it without naming it. Abstract painting can hold a memory without illustrating it, describe a whole season of a person's life without giving it a caption.
If they sit with it in the morning and it feels one way, and they come back to it at night and it feels slightly different, I think I have done something right. A painting that keeps changing as your own life changes around it: that is the version I am always reaching for.
Commissioning abstract art is one of the more quietly courageous things a person can do, and this conversation with Valeria reminded me why. If you are curious about what it might feel like to have a piece made from your inner material, the way into Soul Portrait is through our waitlist at yoursoulportrait.art/waitlist. A match is never guaranteed and there is no fixed timeline, but the process begins, as Valeria would say, with an emotional address. That part is entirely yours to give.
Chloe
Curator, Soul Portrait
Questions
Do I need to know exactly what I want before I join the waitlist?
Not at all. The psychological questionnaire is designed to draw out what you feel, not what you can already picture. Many of the most meaningful commissions begin with someone who had very little idea what they wanted visually, only a strong sense of what they needed the work to hold.
How does Soul Portrait protect my privacy during the commission process?
Your questionnaire responses are anonymised before they are shared with artists. An artist never knows who you are unless you choose to approve their introduction and move forward together. Your personal material stays yours.
What happens to my payment while the piece is being made?
Payment is held in escrow throughout the process. It is not released to the artist until the commission reaches its agreed conclusion. That arrangement is there to protect both you and the artist, and the terms are stated plainly before anything begins.
There is a portrait of you that no camera could take.
Soul Portrait is invitation only. Join the waitlist and we will be in touch.