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Finished a big piece today, got it photographed, sent it off. Felt good for about four hours. Then I'm telling this woman at the framer's what I do and she looks at a photo and goes, "oh, the gaps, did you run out of grout?" No. They're deliberate, they're part of the drawing, the negative space is doing half the work. But I just said "no, it's a choice" and smiled and paid for my frame. It's the ones who think they're being kind that get me. Nobody walks up to a painter and asks if the brushstrokes were a mistake. But mosaic invites it somehow, because people assume the chaos came first and the order was a struggle that maybe failed. I've been cutting and setting stone by hand for twenty years and I still said "it's a choice" instead of what I actually wanted to say, which was "the gaps are the point, stare at a Byzantine floor sometime." I know I should let it slide. I'm still annoyed at myself for the soft answer more than at her. No question, just needed that said out loud where someone might get it. 🙂

Accidentally archived the reel that had 200k views and something like 12k saves. Panicked for an hour. Then two paintings sold that week that had literally been sitting for months, and I'm pretty sure the buyers found me through a random older post instead. I'm not saying the algorithm is fake or whatever. I'm saying I built this whole mental story about which piece of content is "doing the work" and I had no actual evidence. The reel was king, I decided. It was not king. It was just loud. Now I'm kind of obsessed with what actually converts vs what just feels good to watch. The boring in-progress shot from my shitty studio light outsold the cinematic golden hour timelapse every time this month. Every time. I don't know what to do with that except stop guessing and start treating every post like a goddamn experiment.

A collector bought a piece this spring and when I asked what caught their eye they didn't mention the studio work, the process shots, the exhibition photos the gallery put out. They said it was a story I posted at nine in the morning of my coffee on the bench next to an unfinished canvas, mostly out of frame, half the image out of focus because the phone was still waking up. The painting was two years old by then. It had been in two group shows. Nobody bought it. And the thing that sold it was basically an accident, a photo I took without thinking so my wife would know I was still alive in the studio. I've spent twenty-five years learning how to make the work and maybe five learning how to show it. And the showing still defeats me, daily. But I notice the accidental stuff does more than the deliberate stuff, and I don't know what to do with that information. I can't manufacture accidents on purpose. I tried. It shows.

I keep a separate bucket just for pieces that come out of the kiln wrong and honestly it's become my favorite place to dig through. Today I pulled out a little pinch pot from like three weeks ago that cracked down one side in the firing and I swear the crack saved it. It was boring before, just a plain bowl, and now it has this jagged line running through it like it's telling you something. I glazed over the edge of the break and it looks intentional. It might have been the best piece I made all month and it was a failure. I know everyone preaches about embracing the happy accident but my abuela always says my whole career is just organized accidents. She's not wrong. I've started leaving the bin full on purpose now because half my market table comes from stuff I fished out of it and told a story about. The kiln does what it wants. You just have to be paying attention when it happens.

Sold a little vase at the market on Saturday that I thought was one of my worst pieces. The glaze came out cloudy and the lip slumped to one side when I was being lazy with the wire. I almost didn't even put it out. Some woman picked it up, turned it around for like five minutes, and said it was her favorite thing on the table. Paid full price without asking for a discount, which never happens here. And look. I took the money. I smiled and wrapped it up. But I've been thinking about it all week. Either my taste is completely broken or people genuinely see something in the wonk that I write off as failure. Maybe both. Because the pieces I actually love, the ones I photograph and post and get excited about, those sit. It's the accidents that sell. My grandma always said the kiln knows better than the maker. Maybe she's right and I'm just too close to see it. Anyway, tonight I pulled the one I was convince was ruined and I'm leaving it out on the shelf. Not hiding it in the back. We'll see who's wrong.

Every time I give in and post the thing I almost didn't, the rough etching proof with the wiped plate mark still on it, the screenprint that misregistered and made this weird ghost double, that's the one that travels. The pieces I actually spend weeks on, the editions I pull clean and sign, they sit there with forty views. I know intellectually the rough stuff reads as "process" and process is what the feed wants. We're all supposed to be celebrating the handmade and the imperfect now. But there's part of me that resists being rewarded for the thing I'd normally throw in the bin. It feels like the medium itself is being flattened into aesthetic, the mess as decoration, and the actual conceptual work I'm doing gets no airtime because it doesn't photograph well. Also I'm aware that saying "my spontaneous casual posts do better" is itself a strategy now, and posting about posting is the most hollow loop there is. I tried leaning into it. Posted a genuinely failed proof, ink disaster on the plate, told the truth about what went wrong. It did numbers. And I felt weirdly used, like I'd sold the accident instead of the labour. Still don't know if the answer is to gamify it deliberately or to refuse and accept the smaller reach. Anyone else caught in that particular trap?

Funny thing happened last month. I was mid-stretch of a new canvas, fighting with a stubborn corner, and I photographed the back of the frame out of pure frustration to send to a painter friend. Bare wood, the wedges, my crappy handwritten label where I always date the work. Posted it by accident to my story before I caught myself. That image sold the painting before I ever showed the front. A collector I'd been going back and forth with for weeks wrote within the hour. Said he liked seeing the bones of it. I don't know what to do with that information. That the accidental, half-finished, unglamorous behind-the-scenes carries more weight than the months of careful work. I resent it a little. But I'm also not stupid. So now I'm trying to figure out how much of my process to show without turning the studio into a circus. There's a line between letting people in and performing the work instead of doing it. I keep showing the mess and it keeps working, and I'm not sure I like that it does.

I keep noticing it in my slab pots and cups with faces pressed into them: every single one reads sad, even the ones I'm not trying to make sad. I'll be in a good mood, building something playful, and then I open the kiln and it's just this wall of melancholy staring back at me. I think the problem is the glaze pooling in the eye line. I carve the face before bisque, put a white slip on top, and the glaze settles heavy into those scored lines, so the mouth curves down even when I made it straight. The piece is technically fine, the proportions work, but the feeling is wrong and I can't control it. This one with the little figure on the shoulder, I genuinely meant it to look mid-laugh and it came out like she's seen some things. Anyone else fighting the emotional accident thing? Where the material does the opposite of what you intended and it works, but only if you lean into it? I keep trying to fix it with the tools and I think I need to fix it with the glaze math instead.

I've been developing prints in the Atlantic for two years now, and I love what the salt does to the blue during washing. But when the paper dries there's always a fine white bloom across the surface, like frost that won't lift. I've tried longer freshwater rinses after, soaking the washed print overnight, even ironing it flat. The crystals come back around the edges no matter what. I know some chemists would just tell me to stop using seawater, but I can't. The water from Matosinhos beach gives me a tone I've never matched with tap water, this deeper green-blue under the Prussian. It's not a technical accident, it's part of the piece. But the bloom makes it look unfinished, like a bad print, and I can't tell if I'm seeing it as a flaw or if it actually is one. Has anyone lived with a material that fights back like this and just accepted it as part of the work? Or is there a fix I'm not seeing?

How did the first gallery actually happen for you? I don't mean the first show, I mean the first time a stranger who owned a wall said yes. Mine took two years of dropping in. Same guy, month after month, I'd show up with photographs and he'd tell me to come back with something better. I was 28, thought I was too good for it, but I kept going back because my old master told me that's how it worked. One day he finally walked my studio and picked one piece. Never explained what changed. So what was yours? Did you cold-call, get introduced, have someone see your work somewhere by accident? I'm curious if anyone actually gets in through the front door anymore.

I've spent this whole week on the same young woman's portrait, and I mean the same one, over and over. Nine versions on the easel now, taped to the wall like some kind of confession. Every time I get the eyes almost right and something else collapses, usually the mouth. Her lips are not expressive exactly, just slightly parted, and I cannot for the life of me get that to stop looking like hesitation. My partner keeps saying he can't even tell them apart, which I think is meant to be reassuring. It is not reassuring. But today the tenth one, I don't know what changed. Maybe I stopped trying so hard. The smudge on her cheekbone that I've been fighting all week just... stayed. And it's the one. The one I meant all along. So of course now I'm already scared I'll never do it again. That's the thing nobody warns you about. The good ones feel like accidents you didn't earn. Anyway. Leaving it up overnight. Not touching it till morning, that's the rule I never keep. Wish me luck. 🙂

I was clearing a drawer I've been avoiding and there it was, a spool of monofilament he must have tucked there years ago, the kind he used for the longlines. Faded, brittle, salt-stiff in places. I couldn't throw it out. So I laid a length across a freshly coated sheet of paper and let the sun do the rest. The line doesn't read solid like I expected. It leaves these thin, ghostly traces, almost like a thread of light that got caught. Faint interruptions where the sun wrapped around the curve of it. Where it kinked, the line lifted off the paper and the blue rushed in underneath. Those are my favourite parts. Little accidents he would have called coisa malfeita, badly made thing, but I think they're the most true. Anyway. He's been gone eight years and I still find him in the strangest places. Today he was in the sun, on paper, in that particular blue.

I got my first gallery show because a gallerist saw me sketching a crumbling old house from the street and stopped to ask what I was doing. I thought she was going to tell me to move along, honestly. But she watched for a bit, gave me her card, and two months later I had a wall. Pure accident, zero strategy. What about you guys? What's the weirdest way a gallery connection ever happened for you? I want the stories that don't fit the "I emailed, they said yes" template.

My first gallery work came the dumbest way possible: I walked in, asked if they'd ever shown mosaic, and the owner said "show me what you've got." I had three pieces in the boot of my car, so I brought them in. She took two on the spot. Completely by accident, no portfolio, no pitch, nothing. Took me years to realize that was luck, not method. Every gallery since has been emails, applications, the slow way. How did yours happen? The honest version, not the polished one. Walk-in, cold email, referral, or pure chance like mine?

Spent a month on a welded steel piece. Ground every weld down until the seams disappeared. Sanded and sealed it. Put it in the yard to check the shadow line and my neighbor's dog knocked it over, bent one of the legs out of square. Straightened it the next morning. You'd never know it happened. But I caught myself thinking about it differently now. That little accident is part of the thing now, whether anyone can see it or not. Point is, I spent 30 hours on a seam nobody's going to inspect and a dog changed the piece in two seconds. I keep thinking about that ratio and I don't know what to do with it. It's not a complaint. It's just the truth of making things, and the online version of it is a circus. Probably won't even post the piece. The photo won't show what the work was. It never does.

I did a market stall last weekend, first one in over a year, and sold eleven prints. Eleven. More than I moved through my whole shop last month. And yet every morning I sit down and put the energy into the Instagram grid, because that's what you're supposed to do. It's not that the online stuff is useless. I met a few real collectors through it, one who bought a big piece. But the work is so physical. It's paper that's been soaked in seawater, it has salt crust on the edges, it smells like the shore. You can't convey that through a screen no matter how good your lighting is. There's a pattern I keep noticing in the work I'm most proud of. It always finds its people by accident. Someone sees it pinned to a wall somewhere, or held in a friend's hands, and that's the whole transaction. The algorithm has nothing to do with it. I keep telling myself I'll spend more time doing markets and studio visits and less time pretending the numbers mean something. Then a month goes by and I've posted every day and done one market. Does anyone else have this split, where the thing that actually works is the thing you avoid because it's more tiring and less measurable?

There's this little vessel I made like three months ago. Handbuilt, sort of egg-shaped with a neck that bends too far to the left. I underfired it by accident and the glaze came out this weird milky grey instead of the deep green I wanted. Honestly I hate looking at it. It sits on my shelf and I keep meaning to recycle the clay. But every single person who comes to my stall picks it up. Like, reaches for it before anything else. I sold four others just like it this weekend at the market in El Cabanyal and I don't understand why. One woman said it looked "honest." I don't even know what that means. I'm not complaining exactly, it's paying for more clay. But it messes with my head a little, like maybe what I think is a mistake is actually the thing that works? Or maybe people just like weird egg shapes. I don't know. Anyway if you're reading this and you bought the grey egg thing from me on Sunday, I hope you like it more than I do. genuinely.

there's a certain type of person who'll walk into the studio, see me stood there huffing a sheet of grey lino like it's glue, and just slowly back out again. but i swear to god there's something in that fresh slab, the sharp of it, the dust, the way it's still got that factory flatness before you've put a single mark in it. it's the same feeling as the first cut into a new block of cheese. potential. pure potential. i bought a batch of the cheap japanned stuff last week, the kind that smells like a chemical accident, and i'm embarrassed by how happy it made me. the dog came in, sniffed it, and walked straight back out again. fair play to her. anyone else got a studio smell that just hits right or is it just me and my weird lino habit

Spent two days rearranging a piece about my grandmother's house. Every element finally sits where it should, the balance is actually there, and I keep staring at it wanting to scrape the whole panel clean. Technically it's the most correct thing I've made in months. It's also dead in a way I can't name. I think I over-planned the life out of it. When I work fast and sloppy the accidents carry the feeling. This one I measured. Nothing surprised me. The whole time I was arranging I already knew what every corner would do and now it's like looking at a photograph of a room instead of the room. Anyone else hit this? Where the thing is right and it's wrong precisely because it's right. I don't know if the fix is tearing a corner up or walking away for a week or just admitting this one was practice and moving on.

My good willow charcoal ran out at 9pm and I needed to keep going on this piece so I walked to the corner shop and they had this cheap stick, no brand, wrapped in foil, four quid. I think it's for drawing on packaging not art. And it's making the fattest blackest marks I've ever gotten, like the stick is furious about being sold at a corner shop and taking it out on the paper. Should probably be annoyed I spent £40 on the fancy stuff but honestly most of my best work happens by accident or desperation. Give me a surface that might reject me and I show up better than I ever do with a clean setup. Maybe that's the whole thing. Maybe I should stop buying nice materials and just raid the corner shop forever. Not sure the piece is good but I'm lit right now about these marks. That's usually a bad sign. 😭