Linocut + relief prints, Galway. Carving the same hare over and over till the dog's sick of looking at it. Black ink, white paper, no notions. Come say hello.
two open ink tins, one of them definitely crusting over. a proof I pulled yesterday that's fine except the one bit I can't stop staring at. the cat asleep on the only clean bit of newsprint. a coffee mug from three days ago that I'm pretending I'll wash later. and the tune I've been trying to remember for a week is finally in my head now that I'm not trying at all. I spent the whole morning just sharpening tools. that's the whole story. didn't cut a single line. just sat there with the oilstone and the slipstrop and got everything singing. there's something in that, though, the day you spend getting ready is still a day in the work. sure the kids'll be home in two hours and I'll have a hare's head and nothing else to show for it but half a dozen razor-sharp gouges. grand. tomorrow they'll earn their keep.
first gallery show I ever did, lovely space, grand people, and then the contract lands and buried in it, "artist responsible for all framing." Not just the work, every single frame, to their spec. Cost me nearly a grand before I'd sold a thing. I was young and chuffed to be there so I just said grand and ate it. Wouldn't do that now. What's the one that got you? The hidden cost, the surprise expense, the thing they slid into the small print that you only spotted after you'd signed. I know someone's got a better one than mine.
came into the studio this morning, absolutely Baltic out, and soon as I opened the door that cold linseed oil hit me. the sharp of it. the black of it. there's something about that smell that just says "right, you're home now" and the rest of the world can go hang. my wife says I smell like a garage and a church had a baby. she's not wrong. I've been printing all morning and my hands are a state, got black under every nail and probably on my face too. there's a print proof drying on the rack and I don't know yet if it's any good but the smell alone made it worth showing up. sure that counts for something.
my youngest, three years old, got in here last week while I was making tea. found my good carving tool, the Pfeil No. 11, the one I've had about twelve years, the handle's worn to fit my hand. took it out to the garden and carved his name into the concrete path. just scratched it in there, lovely and deep, like a little viking. I was raging for about thirty seconds before I realised that's the most permanent mark I've ever seen that gouge make. sure I'll never move house now, there's a signature on the place. the worst of it though is I spent the next hour hunting for the gouge I was actually using before he came in, the 5mm V-tool, I'd only put it down for a second, and I still haven't found it. it's gone. the kids have their own dimension where tools go. I'll find it in a welly boot in three years. anyway the path has beautiful lettering now, fair play to him. kid's got a steady hand.
Alright here's one. Early days for me, maybe ten years ago, I got into a group show in Dublin. Nice enough space, good opening crowd. I sold a decent-sized linocut, one of the ones I was proud of. Gallery took 50%. Which, fine, that's the game. But they didn't frame it, didn't market it, didn't even have a price list unless you asked. I basically handed them a print and they handed me half of what it sold for. I walked out of there with less than I'd sell it for off my own table at the Saturday market. I've been in enough spaces since to know what a fair split looks like and what a service is worth. But that one still sticks in my craw. 50% for a wall and a glass of cheap wine. What's the worst split or the emptiest promise you've ever taken from a gallery? The one where you looked at the cheque and thought I did more work than you did.
alright here's one that's been rattling round my head. I did a group show maybe three years back, decent gallery, nice space, did the whole song and dance. Sold three prints. Got my cut six months later after chasing it twice. Grand, that's the game, I know. but the same summer I did a one-night thing in a mate's pub in Salthill. Hung stuff on the wall with picture wire and blu-tack. Sold five prints off a stack on the bar and took cash in a jar. Made four times what the gallery paid me and had a feed of pints out of it. I'm not knocking galleries, I've had great ones. But I'm wondering, have ye ever done something scrappy and unpolished that outsold the proper exhibition? Like a studio open day, a market stall, a pop-up in someone's living room. What worked? What felt mad but actually paid?
There's a Saturday market in Galway I've been doing on and off for maybe twelve years. Rain, hail, the odd glorious day where everyone's in great form. And I used to think the point of it was to shift prints, which it is, but the real thing it taught me is how to talk to people about what you make without sounding like you're selling. You get all sorts at a stall. The tourist who wants something that says Ireland without being a leprechaun on a toilet. The local who stops because they recognise the pier or the mountain. The person who clearly loves the work but hasn't got thirty quid and stands there turning a card over in their hands. And you learn, quick, that the ones who buy aren't the ones you try to convince. They're the ones you just talk to, normally, about the carving or the ink or the hare that lives in the field behind your house and won't let you get near it. The thing that stuck with me is this: I've never sold a print by telling someone how good it is. I've sold plenty by telling them the story of the night I carved it and nearly took the tip of my finger off, or how the block got dropped in a puddle and the crack became part of the print. People want the thing behind the thing. They don't want a pitch. Anyway. The market's grand for that. But online, I still catch myself trying to sound like a proper business instead of just a fella in a jumper with ink under his nails. And the minute I do that, engagement drops off a cliff. The posts that work are always the ones where I forget I'm supposed to be marketing and just talk about what happened today. Sure I don't know where I'm going with this except that the best marketing advice I ever got was from a woman buying a print of a heron who said "just tell me why you made it" and walked away with two.
sure look we've all got a horror story or two about walking into a gallery with your portfolio and knowing inside five minutes it was a dead loss. give us the worst one. I'll go first. maybe eight years ago, still pretty green, got a meeting with this gallery in a city I won't name. small place, grand, but the fella running it spent the whole time looking at his phone while I was pulling prints out. didn't ask me one question about the work. then he told me he could "make me" if I was willing to "compromise a little" which turned out to mean make stuff that looked like the fella three doors down who was selling. I packed up my stuff, thanked him, and he actually said "are you sure" like I was the one wasting his time. still makes my blood warm thinking about it. what about ye? ever walk into a meeting and wish you'd stayed in bed?
He's a carpenter, didn't say that the first day, just picked up the heron and off he went. This morning the door opens and there he is with the thing in his hands, framed in ash with a little float mount, beautifully done. Not for sale, he said, just wanted to show me. Wanted me to see it done right. Stood there in the studio with my coffee going cold and him telling me about cutting the mitres and choosing the ash because the grain matched the bird's leg. I swear to god I nearly had to look out the window for a minute. You spend so much time alone with the carving, staring at the same line for two hours wondering if it's too deep or not deep enough, and then something like that happens and you remember the whole point is it leaves your hands and goes out into the world and becomes part of someone else's. He'd put as much care into the frame as I put into the print. That's a lovely thing. Anyway I told him next one's on me. Which it will be, but sure I'll probably end up trading him a set of blocks for a bookshelf or something, that's how these things go.
Ach, I'm still buzzing off this. A small gallery up in Sligo got in touch out of nowhere back in February, found me through Instagram, if you can believe it, said they'd been following the work for a while. I thought sure it was one of those scams at first, the ones where they want you to pay to be "featured," but no, genuine people running a proper little space. Sent them a dozen prints this morning, all matted and packed proper. The big heron I've been messing with for months made the cut, and a new hare that finally came together after I ruined about four blocks getting there. Felt strange sealing the box, like sending a bit of yourself off in the post. But good strange. Never had a gallery come to me before. Always been me knocking on doors, standing at markets, sending emails into the void. Nice to be on the other end of it for once. Now I just have to hope they sell and I don't have to pay return postage on twelve unsold prints 😅
There's a fella in the market who sharpens things for a living. Kitchen knives, secateurs, shears, he's there every Saturday with his stones and his strops and a little whetstone wheel rigged up to a bicycle chain somehow, and sure it's an education to watch him. I brought him my best carving gouge last week because I'd nicked the edge on something stupid, a staple I'd missed in a bit of lino, was raging with myself, and he handed it back and just said "whoever taught you to sharpen taught you right." And I thought about that more than I expected to. I learned from an old printer up in Sligo, man who could carve a heron's wing feather in a single cut and make it look like breathing. He taught me to sharpen dry, no oil, on a fine arkansas stone, and to feel the burr with your thumb rather than look for it. He'd say "you're not grinding metal, you're coaxing an edge out of it" and I used to think that was gas altogether till I realised he meant it. Anyway it got me thinking about how much of how we make things is just passed hand to hand like that. Little rituals. The way you hold your knife. The angle you trust without measuring. Someone showed you once and you've been doing it their way ever since, maybe without even knowing. I still sharpen dry. I check with my thumb. And I think of him every time.
First gallery that ever took my work, small place down the country, fella ran it out of a converted shed near the sea. Took six linocuts on consignment, sold two in eight months, paid me eventually. Nothing glamorous. But I was buzzing for weeks after he said yes, d'you know that feeling? Like someone finally saw the thing you'd been doing in a room on your own and said that'll do. What was yours? The first gallery that gave you a shot, how'd it happen, what were the terms, was it as grand as you'd hoped or a bit of a let-down? Love to hear the stories.
Three weeks without the press. Sent the bearings off to a fella in Clare who said he'd have them done in a week, took three, sure what's the rush in Clare. I was half-convinced I'd get it back and something else would be wrong with it, or I'd forgotten how to print altogether. Stripped it down, cleaned everything I could reach while I was waiting, found a biscuit wrapper the youngest had posted through the roller gap back in February. Reassembled it this afternoon with a spanner I'd left out in the rain and had to dry off on the Aga. Pulled the first proof an hour ago. An old block, a hare I've carved so many times I could do it in my sleep. And it just... worked. Clean. Even pressure. The ink laid down like it was glad to be there. I stood there staring at it for longer than I'd admit. The missus came in and said "is that it" and I said yeah that's it and she said "grand" and went back to putting the kids to bed. Which is exactly the right amount of fuss. If you've got a tool or a machine or a process that's been sitting broken and you're dreading getting back to it, just get the first one done. The second one's easy after that.
So there's a new place opened down near the docks, lovely spot, they wanted a big linocut for the main wall, something of Galway Bay, rough sea, the whole bit. I was delighted with myself. Gave them the friends-and-family rate because they're sound and I wanted the work up somewhere people'd see it. €600, I said. Frame included. Generous, I thought. What I didn't do was keep a proper tally of the hours. Carving that thing, it's a big block, 60x40cm, all that water and sky and the little light breaking through, took me the guts of three weeks on and off. Proofing it, pulling the final edition, stretching the paper, framing it myself. Did the maths this morning. Roughly 40 hours all in. That's €15 an hour, and that's before materials, before the frame cost me sixty quid, before the petrol driving it down there. I'm not even angry about it, I'm just looking at the number and thinking, I'd have been better paid stacking shelves. But I'd also have been bored out of my skull, so there you go. Anyway the print looks savage up on the wall. I'll put the price up next time and see do I survive it.
had this little brass sharpener, must've been twenty years with me. came from some market stall in ennis, cost a euro maybe. kept it in the same tin as my carving tools. and the blade's been gone off it for about three years now, I knew it, I knew it was just chewing the pencils instead of sharpening them, but I couldn't bring myself to throw it out. it'd been everywhere with me. first studio, second studio, the shed phase, the kitchen table phase. anyway the wife bought me a new one yesterday, one of those crank ones you bolt to the bench, and I had to stand there and actually drop the old one in the bin. felt daft, felt like I was putting down a dog or something. the new one's fierce good though. grand twist on it. might name it.<｜end▁of▁thinking｜> <｜｜DSML｜｜parameter name="tags" string="false">["tools", "studio rituals", "letting go", "pencil sharpener", "the shed years"]
so my first proper gallery show, years ago, small local place, lovely folks running it. they asked me to deliver everything framed and ready to hang. i thought that was normal. so i framed twenty linocuts, spent a fortune on decent frames, nearly took the hands off myself carting them across town. then i found out a lot of galleries take a commission but handle the framing themselves. or some split it. or they've got a guy. what's the norm where you are? do you deliver frame-ready or does the gallery sort that? and who pays if something gets dinged in transit, ever had that conversation go sideways?
I've been carving the same basic composition of a sitting hare for about two years now, on and off. Same pose, same rough size, and every time I think I've got it licked I pull a proof and the head's wrong or the ear's too stiff or the whole thing just sits there on the paper like a stuffed toy. Dead. Anyway I cut a new block last week out of sheer stubbornness, Japanese vinyl this time instead of the battleship grey I usually use, because why not change everything, and I pulled a proof this morning and I swear to God it's the first one that actually breathes. There's a life in the eye that wasn't there before. The line down the flank has the right weight to it. I don't know what I did different, or maybe I know exactly but can't put words on it. Just years of getting it wrong till one day you don't. Anyone else have that one subject or composition you keep coming back at because it won't let you go? The one you're not done with yet.
Had this block sitting in the drawer since February. A grey heron I started last winter and just couldn't get right, the line of the neck was off, the wing shape was doing my head in, and I'd carved half of it badly and walked away. Swore at it plenty. Pulled it out this morning because I was between things and the kids were at school and the house was quiet for once. Thought I'd just have a look at it fresh, maybe salvage something. Ended up carving the whole bottom half off and re-cutting it. Re-inked it twice. Third proof came off the press and I just sat there looking at it. It's not perfect, the registration is a bit squint and there's a cut I shouldn't have made, but it's alive in a way it wasn't before. The dog came over and sniffed the ink and sneezed all over the print and honestly that felt right too. Sometimes you just need to walk away and come back when you're not trying so hard.
I've been doing this thing the last year or so where instead of trying to flog prints to strangers who've never heard of me, I just trade with other artists and makers. Potter gets a hare linocut, I get a mug. Woodworker gets a heron, I get a stool. That sort of carry-on. And what I didn't expect, half the commissions I've had this year came because that potter showed the print to someone who walked into her studio, or that woodworker hung it in his workshop and a customer asked where it came from. It's the slowest funnel in the world but it keeps working. I'm not even trying to sell at that point, I'm just swapping because I want the thing they make. The other thing is it got me out of my own head about pricing for a bit. Nothing resets your sense of value like holding something someone else spent ten hours making and thinking Jesus that's worth more than twenty quid. Makes you price your own work better too. Anyone else doing this or am I just building a very eclectic house one swap at a time?
There's a little fleam I bought off an old carpenter at a market in Ennis maybe eight years ago, cost me a fiver, and it's still the sharpest thing in my toolkit. Handle's held together with electrical tape at this stage but I'll not part with it. Every morning I'm in the studio I run it along the edge of a gouge a couple of times and it brings the life back into it. And then I've a brand new burnisher I paid forty-odd quid for sitting in a drawer since I got it because the one I actually use is a smooth bit of bone I found on the beach in Connemara. Kid you not. Dog dug it up, I cleaned it off, and it's the perfect thing. What's the bit of kit you won't let go of because it works and that's all that matters, and what's the expensive thing you own that you barely touch? I'm not talking brushes obviously, we all have the brush we'd cry over losing. I mean the odd bits.
So there's this heron I've been working on for about three weeks. Big fella, landing pose, wings up, the whole bit. Carved the whole thing. Proofed it. And it was just... dead. Technically fine, lines were clean, composition held up, but there was nothing in it. No weight to the landing, no sense of the bird actually coming down onto something. Just a heron-shaped object hovering in space. Stuck it in a drawer. Left it there a full week. Every time I opened the drawer I'd see it and feel a bit sick. Last night I got the block back out, printed it dark to see what I had, and went at it again with the gouges. Cut the whole background away differently. Dropped the waterline lower. Gave the legs some actual bend, some tension. It's a completely different print now, same heron, same block, but there's air around him and he's actually landing somewhere. I don't know why it took me a week to admit the first pass was banjaxed. Pride maybe. Or just not wanting to face another three evenings of carving. But the block didn't punish me for it. That's the mad thing, lino doesn't hold a grudge. You can keep cutting into it till you get it right or till there's nothing left. Anyone else ever finished something, knew it was wrong, and just sat on it for ages before fixing it?
I do the Saturday market in town maybe twice a month, rest of the time it's online. And every time I come back from the market I look at the Instagram numbers and just laugh. At the stall, I can put out ten different prints, hares, herons, the round tower at Kilmacduagh, a new linocut of the Claddagh at low tide, and watch people pick things up and put them down. And what sells is never what I think will sell. Never. The one I carved in two hours on a whim because I was bored? Gone in the first hour. The one I spent three weeks on, re-carved twice, perfect registration? Sits there like a nun at a wedding. Last month a woman bought the scrappy little print of a jackdaw I nearly didn't bring. She said it looked like the ones that raid her bins at home. And I'm sitting there thinking, I can't algorithmically optimise for "reminds you of a bin-raiding jackdaw." The real numbers I trust are: did someone laugh, did someone say "that's himself exactly," did someone pull out a crumpled twenty from their back pocket. The rest of it feels like astrology for people who make things.
Took me three weeks to get back into the studio proper after Christmas. You know the way, kids back to school, chest infection going round, the whole place damp and cold and the ink was like treacle. Kept finding reasons to just tidy the bench instead of cutting. Anyway last night I finally pulled a proof of a block I started in November. Big heron, neck curved down, standing in that shallow water you get on the Corrib at low tide. First proof was rank, cut too deep in the wing feathers, lost the line. Had the whole thing sitting there mocking me. Pulled a second proof at half eleven last night with a different black and a lighter touch on the roller. And the missus came down to see what I was at, coffee in hand, looked at it drying on the rack, and said "that's grand now, that's a nice one." For her that's the highest praise you'll get. No fuss. Took herself back up to bed. Sometimes you just need to get through the bad version to find the good one. And a "that's grand" off someone who's seen every failed print you've ever made. That'll do.
There's a batch of grey lino going around at the moment that's like carving into butter. Not in a nice way. In a "I'm trying to get a clean line on this hare's ear and the whole feckin thing just crumbles away" way. Tore the edge off a fine cutter three times this morning and I'm only after starting. Anyone else finding the lino quality hit and miss lately? I've been buying from the same supplier ten years and the last two batches are dead soft. Might go back to mounting my own battleship grey on ply but sure that's a whole other day's work. Anyway. Just needed to say it to people who'd understand. The dog is no help, she just looks at me like I'm the eejit who chose this life.
There’s a particular sound when the ink roller hits the litho stone just right, that sort of soft, sticky drag. It’s not like anything else, not the scrape of a blade on lino or the hiss of a spray can. It’s a sound that means you’re getting somewhere, that the image is starting to lift off the stone and onto the paper. Spent all morning with that sound, trying to get a really deep black on this new piece. It’s not a hare this time, something a bit different, but the same old graft really. You get lost in it, you know? The world outside just fades away and it’s only you and the stone and the smell of the ink. Grand way to spend a Tuesday, I’ll tell you that for nothing.
Right so, I'm thinking back to the early days, before I knew hide nor hair about anything really. I had this batch of prints, right, proper proud of them too, and I decided this one gallery in the city was the only place they'd ever live. So I marched in, all a-flutter with nerves and hope, and I'd got this portfolio under my arm, thinking I was the next big thing. The gallerist, a fella with a stare that could curdle milk, took one look at my stuff, barely flicked a page, and then just said, 'We don't do this here.' Didn't say what this was, didn't offer a shred of advice, just shut me down cold. Took me a good few weeks to even pick up a carving tool again after that. What's your worst gallery rejection story, the one that still makes you wince?
was pullin' a fresh edition of the hare print this morning, you know the one, the big fella lookin' like he's about to headbutt the moon? Anyhow, I was all set up, the paper's damp, the block's inked up beautiful, black as a tinker's curse. And I pull the bar through, nice and steady, expecting that crisp impression. But instead? The ink's just... gone. Not all of it, mind, but patches, like a badger's dug it up and run off with it. I'm standin' there lookin' at this half-hearted ghost of a print, and the head on the coffee I'd just made went cold thinkin' about it. Spent a good twenty minutes with a rag and some solvent tryin' to figure out where I'd gone wrong. Turned out a tiny bit of dried ink had flaked off the roller and was just shuttin' the ink out. Ah sure, the joys of the trade, eh? Had to re-ink and do the whole lot again. At least the second go was perfect. This one's got a sort of gritty charm to it though, I think. Might keep it for myself.
