Search

The 190 x 240 that's been in the studio since March, the one I kept turning to the wall and pulling back out. Oil and cold wax, greyed violet and something that wanted to be yellow but never quite got there. I scraped it back so many times the weave started showing through in a corner. Yesterday I signed it, photographed it, wrapped it, watched it go into the van. All day I told myself it was just another piece. And then at 2am I was standing in the kitchen in the dark, still awake, and I realised I was afraid. Not of it failing, of it meaning something. To someone else. Outside the room where I made it. That's the part you can't rehearse. It's a strange thing to spend months alone with a surface and then release it into the wild. Like watching your kid get on a bus for the first time. You want them to go. But you also want to pull them back and keep them safe. Anyway. It's gone now. I'll know in a few weeks. Or I won't. Sometimes you never know.

I sold a piece last year through a gallery in Berlin. Big installation, months of work, shipping a truckload of steel and glass across two borders. The collector paid 18,000 euros. By the time the gallery took their 50 percent, the trucking company charged me for the special crating I couldn't do myself, the assistant I hired for the install, and the hotel I stayed in because the loading dock appointment was at 7am and I don't know anyone in Berlin who'd let me sleep on their floor at 56, I looked at the bank transfer and it was 3,400 euros. The framer who built the crate made more than I did. I know because I asked him what he charged. He told me. Nice guy. He earned it. I'm not telling this as a sob story. I agreed to the terms. I just keep thinking about how the whole system is built so that the people who touch the work for ten minutes make more than the person who spent four months making it exist. And we all nod and say that's how it works. But it's funny, no. You spend your whole career getting to a number like 18,000 and then you do the math and realise you'd have been better off framing other people's pictures.

I pulled the blanket off the press this morning and noticed the maker's plate on the side. Glaser, West Berlin, 1962. My father died when I was twenty, so he was alive when this press was bolted together in a city that no longer exists. And now it sits in my studio in Berlin, which is basically the same street, a few kilometers from where it was built. My father was not a printmaker. He was a surgeon. I don't know why I keep doing this arithmetic with the dates. But I've been pulling proofs all week and I keep stopping to touch that plate like it's a relic. There is something about objects that outlive the people who made them. That's probably the whole reason I fell into this medium in the first place. The plate, the proof, the edition. You make a thing and it just keeps going, indifferent to whether you're still around to say anything about it. Anyway. I pulled a good proof of the new aquatint today. The first one that actually feels like something. So the press and I are on good terms right now.

I did the math on a recent sale because I was trying to convince myself it was worth it. Large oil and cold wax, 160 x 200 cm, worked on it for about six weeks on and off. Gallery takes 50%, which is standard here. Fine. Then: stretcher bars and canvas, oil, cold wax medium, pigment, about €280 because I don't buy cheap canvas. Transport to Berlin in a hired van because it wouldn't fit in my car, €120. Insurance for the transit. The opening, where I bought drinks for a few people and we all went to dinner after, and I picked up the bill because the gallery director looked at me and I knew I was supposed to. That was about €340. So €4,200 becomes €2,100 after commission. Subtract €740 in costs I can track. That leaves €1,360. Then maybe six weeks of work, but not full-time weeks, so call it 18 days. That's about €75 a day. And I haven't paid tax on the €2,100 yet. I don't know what to do with this information. The painting is sold. The collector is happy. The gallery wants more. And I'm sitting here thinking I should feel good and instead I feel like I ran a small business that lost money on a job. Which I did, if I paid myself minimum wage. The problem is the painting wouldn't exist without those weeks. I can't separate the time from the thing. And the gallery can't sell a painting they never see. And I can't get the painting to Berlin for nothing. So the costs are real and the math is bad and I don't have a solution. Just the numbers.

I keep two lists on my phone. One has the collectors who actually buy my paintings, the people who have been following me since 2016 when I posted a blurry photo of a studio wall. The other is what the algorithm tells me to make: flat lays, process timelapses, "how I paint skin tones" voiceovers, all the content that performs but that I feel slightly sick making. The uncomfortable thing is both lists matter and neither one respects the other. The timelapse of me mixing a flesh tone got four times the reach of the finished painting itself, and most of those new followers have never looked at my actual work. But I sold a triptych last month to a woman in Berlin who found me through exactly that kind of video, liked the person, then went back through the archive and bought the real thing. I've started treating the process content as the shop window and the paintings as what's inside. The window has to be well dressed or nobody comes in. But I also stopped pretending to myself that the window is the art. That distinction was costing me more than the algorithm ever has.

A gallery in Berlin asked for my follower count before they'd even look at slides. Not my CV, not my exhibition history, not the work. Just the number. I told them 4,800 and the conversation cooled about ten degrees. They said they'd "keep me in mind." I've been painting seriously for thirty years. Thirty. I remember when a gallery would come to your studio and stand in front of the canvas for fifteen minutes before saying anything. Naja. I can't even be angry, I'm too tired for it. But I keep thinking about what that number actually measures. It measures how well I perform for strangers on a phone. It doesn't measure a single thing about whether the work is any good. The irony is I'm not even a Luddite about it. I post, I show the process, I answer comments. My daughter set up the whole account for me and I've learned to tolerate it. But I refuse to make the account the point. I'll take the smaller galleries, the ones that still come to the studio and stand in front of the wall for a while. There are fewer of them every year, but they exist. I don't know what the answer is. I just know I didn't spend my twenties learning to draw so that my worth could be decided by an algorithm in California.

I've been selling small etchings for €180 since 2021. Same size, same paper, same amount of work. Three years of the same number while my studio rent in Berlin went up twice and the price of copper plates nearly doubled. Last month I finally raised them to €240. Not a huge jump. Still probably too low for the time that goes in. But I did it. Then a former professor, someone whose opinion I actually respect, saw the new price list and said, in that careful tone, that the pricing was "ambitious." Asked if I was worried about "pricing myself out" of the market. The market being what, exactly? The market of people who think art should cost as much as a nice dinner? I didn't say what I wanted to say, which is that I know etchers in London charging £400 for a similar plate and nobody calls that ambitious. I just said I'd think about it. Now I'm sitting here wondering if I should have raised them more, or if I'm actually wrong. The math says €240 is still a bad hourly rate when you add up drawing time, plate prep, printing, editioning. But the voice of that professor is stuck in my head.

For ten years I kept a paper notebook of every piece I sold. Who bought it, how they found out about me. Back when that was mostly gallery openings and word of mouth. Two marriages and three studios later the notebook is still around, coffee stains and all. Last month I finally put it in a spreadsheet because my son was tired of watching me flip pages. And there it was, plain as day. The single biggest source of sales over a decade is not the gallery, not Instagram, not the fairs. It's people who came to a studio visit once, years ago, and then told one other person. I don't know what to do with this information except keep making work and leave the studio door unlocked. But it is funny how much time I've spent the last two years feeling guilty about my social media presence, when the numbers say the algorithm has never once sold me a room. A colleague in Berlin once told me the market is just a slow conversation. I think about that more than I should.

I got talking to another printmaker here in Berlin about this the other day, how many times a gallery has looked at my portfolio and said "this is great but can you make it bigger/smaller/on paper/on canvas/in a different colour." And how many times I actually did it. Early on I said yes to almost all of it because I was desperate for the wall space. Now I'm more suspicious. Not because I'm difficult but because the ones who wanted me to change everything also turned out to be the ones who didn't really get what the work was about. They just needed something to fill a slot. But I also know a painter who let a gallery push her toward bigger formats and it genuinely opened something up for her. So maybe I'm wrong. What's your line, the point where a requested change stops being useful direction and becomes a red flag?

I'm thinking about the moments that surprised you in a good way with a gallery. For me it was maybe ten years ago, first meeting with a gallerist in Berlin. I brought my usual folder, ready for the standard conversation. She'd read my artist statement. Actually read it. Asked me about a line in it about layering as a form of memory, and I realised she'd thought about it more than I had in years. I didn't get the show. Didn't matter. That conversation changed how I thought about the work. What's a gallery interaction that surprised you, something that restored a bit of faith?

I had a gallery keep two paintings for six months after a group show ended. Not sold, just... sitting there. When I finally pushed for them back, the excuse was the owner had been "reorganising storage." Sure. Worst for me was a gallery in Berlin that closed overnight and I never saw three pieces again. No insurance, no contract worth the paper, just a lesson I should have learned earlier. What's the worst a gallery has ever done with your actual work? Not the rudeness or the slow emails, I mean physically, with the pieces.

Found out last week that the gallery I show with in Berlin takes 50% on editions. Not prints sold through them, editions. I knew the percentage when I signed, I just never did the math on what it meant for the small riso multiples that sell for €80. So the collector pays €80, I get €40, and after paper, ink, the screen, the riso drum wear if I bother to count it, packing, and the trip to drop them off, I'm maybe at €25 a piece. Four hours of editioning to sell four of them and I've made what I'd get for one hour of teaching. The stupid part is I keep pricing as if the gallery cut doesn't exist. I know I should raise the retail price but I'm scared the small multiples stop selling because they're my only "affordable" entry point. So instead I just quietly resent it every time I drop off a batch. I think I need to actually sit down and decide: do I raise the editions to €100 and lose some buyers, or do I stop pretending the gallery is worth it for the small stuff and keep selling those direct? The gallery does bring me the serious collectors, the ones who buy the big etchings. But I can't keep eating the cost on the entry-level work just to feel like I have a foot in the door. Has anyone else had the moment where they did the real math on a gallery split and realized the "foot in the door" was basically them paying for the privilege?

I got turned down by a well-known Berlin gallery back in the early 2000s. Not even a polite no, just silence, the kind where you check your email for two months like a fool. Then the following year that same space closed down. The director went into consulting or something. Meanwhile I put the work into a tiny group show in Brno that got me a real collector and a string of shows after. I think about that a lot. The no that felt like the end of the world at the time was the best routing I never chose. What's the rejection or the door-slamming that actually worked out for you in the end? The one you'd thank now if you could.

I keep thinking about the gallery that wanted to show my etchings a few years back. Contract was vague, no dates for the show, and the gallerist kept saying "we'll figure it out." I signed anyway because I was flattered someone in Berlin wanted my work. The show got postponed three times and then quietly cancelled, and I never got a straight answer. I still haven't learned my lesson properly, honestly. There's always a small voice going "this feels off" and I talk myself out of it because saying no feels like closing a door. What's the red flag you saw early and ignored? And did it turn out to be exactly what you feared?

Group show in Berlin, 2019. Curator with a good reputation, well-known space, the whole thing sounded serious. She said there was no budget for artist fees but the exposure would be valuable. I was between shows anyway so I said yes like a fool. I built a room installation. Three weeks of work, rented a van to drive materials up from Prague, stayed in a friend's flat but still bought food and beer for two weeks, paid an assistant for two days of help mounting things. I kept receipts out of spite, I think. Total cost to me: 38,400 CZK. About 1,500 euros then. The exhibition got a mention in Artforum online. One collector came through and later commissioned a small piece. That commission paid 800 euros. So I lost 700 euros and gained a line in a newsletter nobody remembers. I tell young artists this story now and they nod and then they still do the same thing. I did it too when I was their age. Maybe you have to learn it yourself.

Had a meeting a few years ago with a space in Berlin that said they loved my work but wanted to "see more range" before they'd commit to a show. Which translated to: could I make something less repetitive, less conceptual, more decorative. Basically could I be someone else. I said no and we both wasted six months anyway. I still wonder if I should have been more flexible. But also, the whole reason I work in print is repetition. The multiple IS the point. So "show range" felt like showing I didn't believe in my own ideas. What's the worst thing a gallery has asked you to change about your work? And did you do it?

Someone at the group show in Berlin bought the whole first edition of that screenprint I keep saying I'm done with. All thirty. Not one, the lot. The curator asked if I'd consider printing more and I said no, which felt like turning down a favour but I meant it. The whole point of the piece is that it's finite, that the edition closes and the image becomes something only a few people get to hold. If I reprint it, the thing collapses into exactly what it's about. It's a small sale, really, the money barely covers the month. But the idea held. That's the part I keep turning over. I spent years making multiples and feeling like that made the work lesser, not serious. And now the scarcity is the work. Shouldn't have taken me this long to see my own medium. Anyway. Thirty prints out in the world with my signature and a number. Feels like releasing birds, honestly.

I have about forty etching plates stacked in a corner of my Berlin studio and I know exactly which ones are on top, the ones I used last, the ones I still believe in. The ones at the bottom are the ones I don't want to look at. Some of them are good plates, technically. But they're associated with a show that went nowhere, or a residency where I was lonely, or an idea I didn't push far enough. So they sit there. I could file them properly, label them, give them a chance to be reused or at least recycled. Instead they're a kind of archaeological record of my disappointments. I'm not sure what to do with that. I think I'm supposed to say I'll clean the studio this weekend but we all know that's a lie.

i have a drawer in my studio, just a cheap ikea thing, that's full of plates that didn't work. bitten too deep, not deep enough, a drypoint that caught something i didn't mean but also didn't hate enough to keep. i can't throw them out. they're not good, most of them, but they're the only record i have of the thinking that didn't land. i was talking to a painter friend in berlin last week and she said she scrapes everything over, her whole practice is covering. that's the opposite of what i do. i keep the evidence. maybe it's the printmaker in me, this need for the object to survive even when it fails. or maybe i'm just sentimental about my own bad decisions. anyway i pulled one out today from three years ago. a copper plate with a portrait of a woman who doesn't exist. the face is completely fine but the hand is this grotesque claw because i misjudged the acid. i remember being so furious. now i kind of like the claw. it's the most alive part of the image. i don't know if this is a confession or a habit worth defending. but i wonder, what do you keep that you probably shouldn't?