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sold a 60x80 acrylic for 480 at the weekend. buyer was lovely, paid in cash, carried it out herself. then i sat down and actually did the math, which was a mistake. canvas and stretcher 60. gesso and primer, say 15. tubes of the two colors i used up almost entirely, that's 70 because the good red is stupid expensive now. brushes i killed, amortize whatever, 20. three weeks of work, most of it on the sky, which i repainted twice because the first one was muddy. 480 minus 165 materials = 315. over three weeks that's 15 an hour if i count it as 20 hours, which is generous, because it was more. and i priced it off a number i saw on someone else's instagram. the annoying part is i'd do it again tomorrow. the money isn't really why. but i also can't keep pretending the money is fine, because it isn't, and the only person setting that number is me and i'm clearly doing it badly. sat there with the receipt in my hand and the buyer's car still in the lot and just went, huh. anyway if you're reading this and you also price off vibes and a screenshot you saved, at least we're consistent.

Something I want to share with you all. For many years I am sending my paintings to the cooperative in Patna, and from there sometimes they go to Delhi, once to Kolkata. That much only. My son keeps saying Baba, put on internet, people are buying from all countries. I was doubtful, honestly, because the work is small and made on paper by hand, not any big thing to see. But last month a lady from Hamburg wrote to me. She had seen one of my paintings of the marriage of Gauri and Shiva, kachni style, only line work, no colour filling, three weeks of work with a brush of one or two hair. She wrote that she wanted one for her mother, and she said please do only in that old line style, not with the bright filling which is now common. I sat quiet for some time after reading that. Because this is what my mother used to do. The colour work sells faster, buyers like it, and I also have to make it, no shame in that. But the pure kachni line, that is the mother's hand, so to say. Nobody was asking for it since long. I had nearly stopped doing it except for puja time. So I did one. Small, on handmade paper, line only, fish at the border, and I sent it after eleven days. She wrote back only two lines, that her mother had put it on the wall next to the door. I do not know if this is a big win. The money was not much, and I spent more on the courier than I wanted. But somebody in another country, who never met my mother, asked for her style by name. That felt like something. I am thinking now to keep one corner of the work always for the old line style, even if no buyer comes for months.

Not the collectors, not the buyers. The gallerist. Two weeks after I sent the new list, an email that had begun "Lukas, I have something exciting for you" became "let me think about the timing." I had expected pushback from the buyers. There was none. The three works that sold this spring went at the new numbers without a single negotiation, and one of them was to someone who had asked about the price in 2019 and gone quiet. So it was not the market that flinched. It was the person whose cut got smaller in relative terms, because a 30% raise on my side does not lift his commission in the same proportion he was used to. I am not sure what to do with this. I spent fifteen years being told the price is a signal, that cheap work reads as unserious, and mostly I believed it and still could not bring myself to charge it. Now I did, and the consequence is not more buyers or fewer buyers. It is a quieter phone. The studio does not care either way. I am working on three panels, 180 by 140, cold wax over a red ground, and the scraping back is going badly.

Something happened last week I am still turning over in my mind. A gentleman from Patna, well off, wanted a Kohbar for his drawing room. Size was fine, budget was fine, he was ready to pay more than my usual. Then he said, the colours are very bright ji, and the fish and all, can you make it a little less traditional? More matching with the sofa. I said I will think and let him know. My son says take the order, money is money, do a small change, no harm. Maybe he is right. But I have been sitting with this for some days now. Because what is left if I remove the fish? In our Kohbar the fish is not decoration. It is fertility, it is the whole point of why the bride's family asks for this painting. I cannot make it "less traditional." I can make it smaller. I can make it on better paper. I can explain to him for one hour what he is buying. That much I can do. I did not send that order away yet. He is waiting. My wife says I am stubborn like my mother, which I take as a compliment, though I am not sure she means it so. For those of you selling traditional work, I want to ask honestly. When the buyer wants it diluted, what do you do? Do you hold the line, or you adjust and stay alive? I am not asking to be praised for refusing. I genuinely do not know which is the wiser thing.

This happened two weeks ago. A woman messaged me on WhatsApp, very polite, and she was interested in a Kohbar piece I had finished, the wedding painting with the sun and the moon and the lotus, all traditional. She asked the size, the price, all fine. Then she said, "Can you tell me what colours exactly are in it? I need to see if it will match my apartment's vibe." My son was standing there, I showed him the message. He laughed. I sat for a minute. This painting is about marriage, about fertility, about the gods witnessing a union. The colours are what they are, the red from the palash flower, the black from the soot, the yellow from the turmeric. They come from the earth, they are not chosen for a vibe. I told her, very respectfully, that the colours are natural red, yellow, black, some green from leaves. She said okay and asked if I could change the background to white and make the peacocks blue like "navy blue" instead. I said no, I cannot do like that, this is a traditional piece, the peacock has his proper colours in our work. She didn't buy it. Of course. I am still thinking about this. Not angrily. I understand she is from a different world. But I am realising that online, people are not looking for the thing itself. They are looking for something that fits into their already-made life. The painting is not an object with its own story, it is a decor item that must match the sofa. My question is not to complain. I just want to know, for those of you who make traditional or folk work, how do you handle this? When the buyer wants the art but does not want what the art actually is. Do you adjust and survive, or do you hold the line and lose the sale? I am torn.

I sold a piece last month for 3,500 SEK. Small collage, maybe 30x40cm, took me about a week of evenings because I kept setting it aside and coming back. The buyer is a friend of a friend, not quite a stranger, not quite someone I know. She said "are you sure that's enough?" and I said yes like a reflex. Then I went home and realised I'd just told someone my time and materials and eye and everything I've learned are worth maybe 60 SEK an hour. I still don't know what the right number would have been. But I know I named it first and that was the mistake. Next time someone asks I'm going to say "what's your budget" and let them set the floor before I open my mouth. I've never done that before and it feels uncomfortable but less uncomfortable than the walk home after underselling yourself.

A woman from Tokyo found my work through the Mithila Art Institute page, wrote to me on WhatsApp. She wanted a wedding scene, the full thing, the groom's procession, elephants, the bride under her covering, all the detail. I told her 15,000 rupees for that size, which is already low but she was a foreign buyer and I thought maybe she won't pay more. She said yes very quickly. Then she said she will send in US dollars through her friend's account. 250 dollars. I thought okay, 250 dollars, that sounds like a good amount, more than 15,000 I assumed. You know what I did? I did not check. My son usually handles the online payment things but he was out. The money came. I felt happy. Later my son came home and said, Papa, do you know 250 dollars is almost 21,000 rupees? I sat quiet for a long time. She paid me what the work was worth. I undervalued it myself, not even knowing the rate of my own currency. The embarrassment is still with me. Not at her. At myself. I told her 15,000 for a painting that takes three weeks of daily work and she paid me 21,000 anyway because she decided that's what it costs. A stranger in Tokyo had more respect for my labour than I did. Since then I always check the rate before I quote to anyone outside India. But that feeling sits. How many more times have I done this to myself without knowing? 🙏

Fellow mosaicist cut my rates a while back. She told me there was no way to sell "real art" in this economy unless you priced to move, and honestly I listened for longer than I should have. Dropped a 60x80 piece from €1,400 to €900 thinking I was being smart. Then a client comes to pickup, a hotel owner who'd commissioned it. Looks at the invoice, looks at me, and says flat out: "You undersold yourself. That's an insult to the person buying it too." He paid me the full €1,400 on the spot and told me not to do it again. Thing is, he was right and I knew it. That piece was six weeks of work, smalti I'd imported from Venice, and I'd priced it like a print from IKEA. The friends-fear of pricing yourself out is real but the other direction is real too. When you don't value the work, the buyer reads it as low quality, not a bargain. Raised my floor back to €1,400 for anything with smalti in it. Lost one regular customer since. Still sleep fine. That hotel owner taught me more in one sentence than any pricing workshop ever did.

A visitor from Germany came to our village last month through a cooperative tie-up. She saw the fish and the peacock panel I had done for the wedding season, and she asked the price. I told her twelve thousand rupees. She did not bargain, ji. She simply took out the money and paid me twenty-two thousand because she said my work was worth more than I was asking. That very night I could not sleep properly. Not because I was happy. Because I kept thinking, for thirty-five years my mother sold the same size of painting through the local haat for eight hundred rupees, and it was good money then. I have never once named a price that came to me naturally. I always think of the market here, where the families cannot pay. So we all keep the art cheap to keep it in the hands of our own people, and the foreign buyers walk away with it for whatever they feel. I am not blaming anybody. But I have started asking myself, am I doing a disservice to my mother's art by pricing it for the ones who cannot pay and not for the ones who clearly can. I have not got an answer yet.

One of my bigger pieces, a marriage scene with the fish and the mango tree, went to a buyer in Delhi for ₹7,000. That sounds respectable until you sit and count the days. Preparation of the paper, grinding the colours, the fine line work, then the filling. I worked maybe four hours each day for nine days. That is thirty-six hours. Seven thousand divided by thirty-six comes to about ₹194 an hour. And that is before the cost of the handmade paper and the natural pigments, which are not cheap since the good sources became difficult. My mother used to say we must never sell a painting for less than the soul it carries. But the soul does not pay for the grandson's school books. I have been keeping this art alive my whole life and still I cannot name a fair price for it. When a cooperative takes a cut and the buyer haggles, I am left asking myself if my grandmother's line work is worth less than a plumber's visit. I raised my price to ₹8,500 this month. I am scared to go higher because the buyers are not many. But I have decided the art will not answer to the shame of being cheap any longer. If it sells, good. If not, the painting stays with me in the house where it was made, and that is also something.

Today one gentleman came to our cooperative stall. He liked one painting, the one with the fish and the lotus, took maybe twenty minutes to decide. Then he said, "This is too much. For folk art? You people enjoy making it. Reduce by half." I reduced by ten percent only, because the colours I used, the handmade paper, the many hours. He was not satisfied but he paid. Then he asked, will I teach his daughter also. I said yes, I teach girls in my village, it is my work and my joy. He said, "Good. Then teach her also, no charge, since you enjoy it so much." As if my enjoyment is the payment. As if the art feeds us on appreciation alone. I said kindly, ji, the enjoyment I have is true, but the rice also must come from somewhere. He looked at me like I had said something rude. I am fifty-six years old and still explaining that my hands are labour and my traditions are worth something. Some days I am tired of teaching this lesson to grown men.

I had this piece sitting in my studio forever. A birdhouse made from an old fuse box, wired with a single warm bulb inside. I thought $450 was fair, maybe even a little high. Three years. Nobody. Then this woman comes by, loves it, pays asking price no haggling. I was just relieved to have it gone. Then a friend texts me a screenshot from some HBO show. There's my fuse box birdhouse in the background of a scene. She looked it up, the set dresser rented it from a prop house for two grand. For a week. I charged $450 for something that took me years to make and someone else made almost 5x that in a week just for having it on a shelf in a fictional living room. And honestly I don't even know who to be mad at. The system? Myself for not knowing what things are worth? Both? Still trying to figure out what the actual lesson is here. Not sure it's just "charge more."

I don't understand these algorithms ji, my son tries to explain but I think it is a different world. For months I was posting reels, using hashtags, doing everything the年轻人 (young people) tell me. And yes some likes come, some comments, but serious order? Hardly. But there is this one WhatsApp group, just a small group of art lovers from Patna and Darbhanga, maybe forty people. One of my old students added me. I share a photo of whatever I am finishing that week, with a price. No editing, no hashtag, sometimes just in the evening with bad light. And from that group only, I have sold maybe twelve paintings in the last two months. One man came all the way from Muzaffarpur after seeing a photo of a fish motif I posted there. The platforms want us to dance for them. But the real thing is just people who already know what they like seeing. I am thinking maybe the old way is best, find your people, even if it is a small group, and show them your work directly. No algorithm needed.

Built a shadowbox for a guy last spring using his late father's things. Old army patches, a ration book, a pair of worn gloves. He gave me a box of the stuff and said do whatever felt right. It was genuinely moving work, took me two and a half weeks because I kept stopping to just sit with the material. I quoted €350. He didn't even blink. That should've been my first sign. A month later he listed it on one of those auction sites and it went for €1,100. I only know because a friend sent me the listing. Same box, my signature on the back, photographed badly in his kitchen. I'm not even mad, exactly. More embarrassed at myself. The materials were basically free, sure. But the time, the care, the fact that I handled his father's stuff like it mattered. That had a price and I picked the wrong one. He didn't do anything wrong really, he priced the piece at what it was. I just undervalued it first. Still haven't figured out what the lesson is supposed to be. Charge more? Charge less and get out of the resale game entirely? Both feel true. Neither feels like a plan.

Gallery sold one of my bigger installations last spring. Fine, good money, I thought it was over. Then the collector's conservator calls me: they want to install it in a stairwell in a private house. The piece has a sprinkler head and a functioning old fire alarm that I wired to a bicycle bell. It's not decorative. It goes off if the humidity shifts. I spent three weeks in a correspondence about whether the bell is "part of the artwork" or "safety equipment." Their lawyers had an opinion. My whole life's philosophy was in that email thread. Anyway it's installed now, in a corridor, and the bell rings if someone opens the window in winter. The collector loves it. Says it's alive. Funniest part: the piece was originally built from an abandoned factory's evacuation signage. I made it about how we don't hear warnings anymore. Now it's genuinely annoying them in their own house. Sometimes the work knows better than you do.

I finally did it. After three years of charging 1500 SEK for the same A3 paper collage, I bumped it to 2000 in January. Thought it was modest enough to keep people around. Lost three people who'd bought from me every year. One of them wrote back saying she was "surprised by the increase." That one stung more than I expected because she'd always seemed genuinely interested in the work, not just the price. I'm not going back down. But I didn't expect the silence to feel this specific. I thought I was ready for it and I wasn't.

So I sold a small head study last week. Toned grey paper, maybe A3, one of the ones I did in a single sitting because I was trying to loosen up. I had it priced at 450 euros and honestly I typed that number and then went and made tea so I would not have to look at it. The woman wrote back asking whether the price includes framing. And I said no, framing is separate, I can recommend the place on Gołębia. Then I sat there feeling like I had cheated her somehow. Because the paper cost maybe 6 euros and the pastels I used were already here, so in my head the material cost is almost nothing and I forget the eleven years of doing this badly before I could do it this way. But here is the part I cannot get past. A frame at that shop is 300 euros. So the frame now costs two thirds of the drawing it holds. I do not know what to do with that information. Do I raise the drawing so it looks like a proper thing next to a 300 euro frame, or do I start recommending the cheap framer and hope nobody notices the difference at the edges. I am not even sure this is a pricing question. Maybe it is a "what is a drawing worth when the thing around it is worth more" question. But it is keeping me up, and my partner says I should just be glad it sold, which I am. I am. Just also not.

Somebody from the opening last Friday called the gallery today. Wanted one of the new ones, the big grey-blue with the scrape. Fine. Then ten minutes of gentle negotiation, which I mostly don't do, but the gallery handles that and I wasn't in the room. Fine. Then the kicker: could they have ten percent off the framing because they're "investing in the piece already." I put the goddamn frame on myself. Cut the mitres, joined it, sanded it twice because the first pass looked wrong in this light. That frame is not an add-on, it is part of the work. You do not negotiate against the work. I said no through the gallery, which is the polite version. What I wanted to say is you're not buying a car, you're taking something I made with my hands into your house. The negotiation was already a bad sign. The framing was the tell. Sold it anyway. Of course I did. That's the part I don't like about myself.

Myself Ramesh, Mithila painter from Madhubani. All my life I sold through the cooperative or when someone came to the house. Tourists sometimes, or people from the city who heard about the village where the painting women are. My son, he is in Patna for his job, he took photos of maybe eight of my pieces, a fish with the lotus, a Durga, two peacocks, some others. He put them on WhatsApp status and also in some groups he is in. I did not think much of it. Now in the last month I have sent six paintings by courier. To Delhi. To Bangalore. To one address in Dubai even, a man whose mother is from Darbhanga originally and he wanted something for his wall. These people never touched the paper, never saw the pigment. They saw a phone photo and they trusted it. This is strange to me. In my market, the buyer wants to see the line work up close, wants to know the colour is natural, wants to hold it. But my son says this is how it works now. I am grateful, truly, but also I am thinking, what if the photo does not show the real thing? I use geru and rice paste and lamp black, the photo cannot show that. But the buyers are happy when the parcel arrives. I do not understand this new way but I cannot argue with the orders. Anyone else selling traditional craft online and feeling this same confusion?🙂

I shipped a small gouache piece to a buyer in Portland nine days ago, tracked, packaged like it was going to the moon, and the tracking has said "in transit" since Tuesday of last week. Which is apparently a real status that can just sit there forever like a cat on a fence. The thing is, it wasn't even an expensive one. It was a 6x8, a corner of my window in the morning when the light comes in orange and hits the radiator. I did it fast in one sitting and it's the only piece I've made in months that I didn't pick apart afterward. Sold it for basically nothing because I wanted it to go somewhere. Now some box is somewhere between here and Oregon and the buyer keeps messaging me "any update?" every two days which is fair and also making me want to put my phone in a drawer. I spent $14 on extra padding at the UPS store. $14! For a box that is now a ghost. Anyway I'm going to go repaint the radiator out of spite. If anyone has ever successfully gotten a package unstuck from "in transit" I would love to hear how, or just tell me your worst shipping story so I feel less insane