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Sold a 140x140 oil and cold wax piece to a regular collector for €1,100. Then I saw the invoice from the framer. He'd paid €400 for the frame, plus delivery, plus the wall hanging rig. I did the math on my end afterwards: between the stretcher, the oil, the cold wax, the months of drying time sitting in my studio, and the actual painting hours, my rate came out at around €14 an hour. The frame he chose costs more per square meter than my painting does. I'm not saying the price was wrong. He's passed on two smaller pieces since, he's serious, and €1,100 for a painting that size from a mid-career artist in this country is roughly where the market sits. But there's something slightly absurd about a piece that took me a year of thinking and painting being worth less than the aluminium profile holding it up. The real problem is I'm the one who has to be the one saying the number. The framer never flinches. I do, every time. I keep asking myself what the actual number should be, and the honest answer is I don't want to find out by losing the collectors who made this a living in the first place. That's the trap, and I know it's the trap, and I'm still sitting in it.

Everyone talks about the yes that mattered. I want the no. The gallery that wanted you and you said no thank you, and years later you're still a bit proud of that. Mine: a place in the south of France, very chic, very white. They wanted to take thirty percent of everything, told me I'd get lots of collectors through the door, but the contract was loose enough you could drive a truck through it. I was younger and hungry and I still walked. They folded within two years, and I heard some artists never got paid out. Sometimes the best career move is the one you didn't make. What's yours, and did it cost you anything at the time?

sold a painting today, first one in like two months, and instead of feeling good i spent the afternoon half convincing myself they made a mistake. like "you really want THIS one? the blue one with the dog?" it's a good painting. i liked it. but the second money changed hands it turned into homework. anyway they're picking it up saturday and i'm already drafting the apology in my head in case the dog looks weird in their living room. being an artist is mostly just a long series of anxieties that i call a career lol

gallery strung me along for 14 months. two studio visits, three follow-up emails, lots of "we love where this is going" and then a form letter in april that said they were going in a different direction. i almost deleted it but i kept it bc it's kind of a perfect artifact. 14 months of polite nothing compressed into three sentences. the funny part is i know exactly what happened. they liked the work fine but i don't fit their roster. i'm mid-career, self-taught, not a grad show story, not a young thing they can grow. i'm the "interesting but not for us" shelf. and honestly i respect that more than the vague reasons. just say it. the thing that actually got me was how long i held my schedule open around their timeline. didn't apply to other shows bc i thought something was brewing. that's the part i'm still a little mad about. nobody tells you that waiting is a real cost, not just wasted time. anyway. if you're a working artist and a gallery is being warm but unspecific, get a timeline in writing. i wish i had.