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Sold a run of small prints on the Instagram side in three days. Little 15cm squares, cheap enough that people don't think twice. Then a collector who bought one messaged asking why I don't do a large version of the same piece, one meter wide, because that's what she'd actually hang. Thing is, the big ones don't sell through social. They need to be seen in person, in a gallery, with the light right. I can photograph a cyanotype until the sea turns grey and it still flattens into just another blue rectangle on a feed. So I keep making the small ones because they move, and the collector sits there wanting the big one I haven't printed. There's a version of this economy I don't fully understand yet. The work people say they want and the work people actually buy, they're cousins, not the same person. Anyway I'm prepping the large one this week. I think I'll keep making the smalls too. One feeds the other, even if I can't say exactly how.

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.

A collector came to the studio last month, saw an interior I'd finished weeks earlier, wanted it. I named my price, nine hundred euros, which for me is honest but not bold. They said yes immediately. And instead of relief I felt guilty, like I'd overcharged, like I should have said eight hundred if I was being fair. Sit with that for a second. I'm doing a thing I've trained twenty-five years to do, at a price that nets out to about forty euros an hour before materials and studio costs, and the guilt lives in me because they didn't flinch. I keep a ledger of every finished painting, hours, materials, price. It's brutal reading. Nine hundred sounds like real money to people who don't know the hours don't end when I stop painting. The stretching, the varnishing, the framing, the emails, the schlepping. Everyone who pays for the painting pays for approximately one painting's worth of unpaid work around it. I know what the actual answer is. Raise prices until the flinch comes from the other direction. I've added maybe ten percent in three years. I'm scared of the ceiling because I don't know where it is, and the collector who says yes too fast terrifies me more than the one who negotiates. Anyway the painting is gone now and the guilt faded. But I keep thinking about what it would feel like to name a price and not apologise internally for it.

Just had the weirdest one. A collector found me through a gallery friend, saw my charcoal work on Instagram, wanted a large piece on commission. I quoted $1,400 half up front, half on delivery. We agreed. Six hours. That's all it took. Six hours of actual work and it's honestly one of the best things I've ever made. Every mark landed, nothing fought me, the whole thing just came out of me like I was taking dictation. And I sat there after they picked it up feeling like I'd robbed them. $1,400 for six hours. That's $233 an hour and my brain short-circuited on that number for two days. I've sold pieces that took me 40 hours for less than half that. The thing is I know the hours don't matter. The years of bad drawings matter. The self-teaching and the burnouts and the figuring it out alone matter. But I still couldn't shake it. I almost messaged them to say "hey that was actually fast, want me to add more?" Like I'd been caught cheating. My therapist asked what I'd have charged if it took 40 hours and I said the same, and she said "so which one is the fraud, then?" and it broke my brain a little. I don't know who priced the honest one. I just know I can't keep pricing by my own suffering and calling it integrity.

A collector bought a large piece in March, a serious one, and then two weeks ago wrote to ask if I'd come paint over the lower left corner because it clashed with a new sofa. I thought it was a joke at first. It wasn't. I said no, obviously, but the thing that stayed with me is how long I even hesitated. There was a beat where I thought, well, it's sold, it's their wall, maybe there's a conversation here. That beat is the part I don't like about myself. Ten years ago I wouldn't have hesitated for a second. I'm realising the market has done something to me that I didn't sign up for. The work gets made to be bought, and somewhere along the way the buyer starts to feel like a client and the painting starts to feel like a commission. Object, service, whatever. And then a stranger asks you to un-paint your own painting and part of you runs the calculation. I told him no, and offered to take it back if he wanted something more neutral. He kept it. But I keep thinking about that hesitation. Has anyone else noticed the line moving? Not the artistic one, the one between what you make and what you owe after they pay for it.

There was a still life I nearly scrapped. Peaches and a silver pot, nothing special, but the light on the base of the pot was doing something I couldn't get right for weeks. I had it on the easel so long I started to hate it. I was one pass of the palette knife away from wiping the whole thing down. Then one afternoon I just stopped fighting it and put a last thin glaze on, and suddenly the light was there. Not perfect, but there. I signed it, varnished it, put it in a corner. A collector from the Netherlands bought it yesterday. Asked me if I could do more in that same palette. And I keep thinking about how close it came to never existing, how many paintings die in that window between almost and done. That's the real lesson, I think. The finish is where the painting decides if it gets to be a painting.

I had a piece in a group show maybe five, six years ago. Collector came around, liked it, asked the gallery for my contact. Wanted it for his private collection, he said. But the price, could I do better if we went direct, no gallery cut? I was between shows, rent was due, so I said yes like an idiot. Knocked off almost forty percent. He paid in two installments, took his time on the second one. Six months later I see the same piece at a design auction in London. Estimate was three times what he paid me. Sold for above estimate. I should be angry but mostly I respect the play. Guy saw me coming from across the room. I was the one who said yes.

A collector bought one of my prints at the studio open day, then emailed asking if I'd sign it "individually" because "an edition of 50 feels a bit mass produced." I had to explain that the edition IS the work. The number is not a compromise, it is the point. Fifty prints that are one image, one decision, repeated until they stop being copies and become something else. He wrote back, "Oh, so it's like a limited edition." Yes. That is exactly what it is. That was always the whole thing. I spent ten minutes afterward staring at my own screenprint like I had to defend it from its own buyer. Maybe I should start answering the question with "would you say that to a writer about their print run?" I don't know why the edition makes people so uncomfortable. As if the multiple is somehow less honest than a unique object. As if there is a true original hiding somewhere and the rest of us are just photocopying. Anyway. He bought it. I think he still believes he got a discount version of a real artwork. Let him.

Had a collector ask me last month what a life-size figure in limestone would run. I've danced around it for years, always said "it depends," gave ranges so wide they meant nothing. This time I just told him. 14,000. He didn't blink. I think I could have said 18 and he still wouldn't have blinked. The math is the part nobody sees. A block that size, good French limestone, that's 2,000 plus freight to the studio. Then the roughing-out alone is two to three weeks. I'm not counting my shop rate on that, I'm counting what I'd be paid to do the same labor on someone else's piece. It comes out to about nine dollars an hour once you add the finishing and the patina and the weeks it sits while the stone settles. Nine dollars an hour for a skill it took me thirty years to build. And the guy was ready to pay more. I'm not sure what that says about me or about the market, but it sits wrong. I've been charging what I was afraid to charge, not what the work is worth. Still. Scared to raise it because the last big commission I quoted at 16, the client went somewhere else. Might have been the price. Might not have. But it's in my head now.

ok im going to say the thing and i already know some of you will hate me for it. last month i used an AI tool to mock up a composition, purely to test colour layouts before i committed. then i painted the final piece entirely by hand, every brushstroke mine. a collector bought it and loves it. and ive had this gross feeling sitting in my chest ever since, like i cheated somehow, even though i didnt trace a single thing. where is the actual line here. genuinely asking, because i can't work it out and im tired of pretending i have it figured out

Got an email today from a man who bought a large piece from me two years ago. He wants to borrow it back for an evening. Not for a show, not for a museum, not even for a private viewing with a serious buyer. For a dinner party. He says it would "elevate the conversation." I sat with that for a while. There's a section in my contract about loans, and it's about insurance and condition reports and handling. Nowhere in there is a clause for "my wife wants the guests to see something on the wall that looks like it means something." I said no, as politely as I could manage in writing. He wrote back saying he was "surprised by the gatekeeping." That word. Gatekeeping. As if years of making the thing, and the fact that it's heavy and oil and wax and can't be shoved in a taxi, counts as some petty power trip. What I actually wanted to say is that the painting does its work in the studio and on a wall where someone chooses to live with it. It's not a conversation starter. It has nothing to offer a room full of people who will glance at it once over the wine and move on. That's not snobbery, it's just what the work is. Slow. You have to come back to it. I didn't say any of that. I said "not possible at this time." Which is the grown-up way of saying no without explaining yourself. But honestly, the fact that I had to be the one keeping the dignity of the thing he owns and I made. That sits wrong.

Six months it took to get paid for a portrait. I had almost written the money off, the usual French bitterness about commerce, and then the woman who owed it sent me to two friends and a gallery owner who now shows my work in Geneva. Not because I chased her. Because I kept painting for her while she didn't pay. She remembered that. I think we are too quick to cut people at the first late invoice. Some of the best relationships I have started with a payment that made me grind my teeth. I am not saying let people walk over you. I am saying a bad payer is not necessarily a bad patron. And a fast payer is not necessarily a friend of your work either. The gallery that strings you along for months will sometimes be the one that sells everything. The client who is slow with the check will sometimes be the one who builds your whole next year. The correlation between promptness and generosity is weak. I wish someone had told me that at thirty.

Sold a painting last month. Interior, early morning light coming through a window, that grey-gold hour I actually like better than any sunset. Man who bought it emails me two weeks later: could I make the light warmer, his wife finds the room in the painting cold and it's in their dining room now. I said no. Politely the first time. Then he wrote again offering to pay extra. As if it were a colour grading slider in a video app. The whole painting is built on that light, the shadows are cool because the light is cool, you warm it and every edge in the piece collapses. He wasn't asking me to change a painting. He was asking me to change the wallpaper. What I wanted to say is that a painting is not decor that failed to match the sofa. What I said was that I'd buy it back if it didn't suit the room. He went quiet after that. The funny thing is I'd have discussed almost anything else. Composition, palette, even the frame. But there's a line where the thing stops being mine and starts being a product, and I couldn't pretend I didn't see it.

A man I've sold three paintings to over the years, nice enough, serious collection, comes to the studio, emails me last month. He wants two new pieces, both around 80x60cm. He asks if I can "do something" on the price since he's taking two at once. I said no. Politely but directly. I explained that my price is the price because of what goes into it, not because I'm guessing what the market will bear. Buying two doesn't make the painting easier to paint. He wrote back the same day, a bit cool, said he understood. I haven't heard from him since. Maybe I lost a client, maybe he's just busy. What I keep thinking about is how uncomfortable that moment was, the feeling that I was being rude by not playing the game. In France especially, people negotiate on everything. But I don't want my work to be something you bargain over like a carpet in a souk. The price says what the work is. If I bend, I'm saying it wasn't really that price to begin with. Still. The silence makes you wonder.

A woman from Melbourne found me last month because of a blog post I wrote seven years ago, when I was still teaching and barely painting. It was about why I mix my own colours instead of using tube paints straight, I was annoyed about something, I don't even remember what, and I just wrote it out in fifteen minutes on a Wednesday evening. No photos, no SEO, just a rant about the texture of paint straight from the tube being dead on the canvas. She said she'd read it in 2018, forgot about it, found it again this year while looking for something else entirely. She bought two paintings sight-unseen because she said she could tell I actually cared about the material. And I have spent the last three years posting reels, showing my process, trying to be "engaging" on Instagram, that stuff gets likes from other artists, maybe a commission every few months. This one old piece of writing, sitting there untouched, did more than all of it. I don't know what the lesson is exactly. Keep the old things alive, maybe. Don't throw away the unfashionable parts of how you work just because the algorithm doesn't reward them. Or maybe it's that a real opinion outlasts a good strategy every time.

Listed a piece I nearly didn't photograph because I thought it was too raw. Charcoal smeared where I meant it to stay clean, torn photo edges showing, the whole thing kind of falling apart the way I usually try to hide. Put it up anyway last Tuesday with a caption that was basically "this one fought me." Sold in under 24 hours to someone who sent a message about their own mother's handwriting being the same as the one in the found photo. I didn't even notice the handwriting matched anything. I just pulled the photo because the dress in it looked like one my brother's first girlfriend wore. Every time I try to predict what lands, I'm wrong. The polished landscape pieces I actually thought would go sit there for months. This one, the one that felt like letting someone see the workbench mid-mess, gone like that. Makes me wonder how much of my process is just me tidying things that people would've liked fine as they were.

A couple came to the studio today, nice people, serious look about them. She spent a long time in front of the still life with the copper pot, the one where the light comes through the wine glass. Said it made her feel something. Then the husband asked if I could do a version with "less of that." Less of the feeling, is what he meant. He wanted the same painting but flatter, calmer, more neutral, for above the sofa in the living room. I said no. Politely, I think. Offered to show them other work that was quieter by nature. But he kept pushing, like it was a question of my flexibility rather than the point of the thing. The point being that I spent three weeks getting that light right, glazing the copper until it rang. You don't ask a singer to do the song without the voice. I know commissions are commissions and I do them, happily, within reason. But there's a version of this job where you become a decorator with a paintbrush, and every time a request like this comes in I feel the floor tilt toward it. Where is the line, exactly? When do you say no and mean it, and when are you just being proud and difficult? I told them to think it over. I don't think they'll be back. That's probably fine.

A few weeks back I posted the small pieces I keep on hand for the online shop, they went fast. Then a message: "these are lovely, why don't you make them bigger?" Polite, interested. I told them the truth: the small ones are 30 cm by 30, three weeks of work. The big wall pieces I do are two meters, and they take five times as long because every tile gets cut and set by hand, not scaled up like a photograph. The bigger version isn't the same thing enlarged. It's a different animal, and it costs accordingly. Silence. Then: "can you do me one at 60 cm for the same price?" That was the whole conversation. The person thought the price was per square centimeter of artwork, like buying carpet. Not per hour of kneeling on a floor with a hammer and nippers. I get it, nobody knows what anything costs if they've never had to make it. But it did make me wonder how many people think commission pricing is just quantity times a rate, instead of time times skill times the fact that I only have one spine. Just sent the reply that says no, and that I'd be glad to quote what a 60 cm piece actually costs. Curious to see if they come back.

So my granddaughter set up my Instagram a few years back, and I just post what I'm working on. I don't know all the tricks, I just put the quilt up there with whatever I feel like saying about it. And this young lady from California, she's a curator at some museum, I had to look it up, messages me and says she found my work through a hashtag I didn't even put on there. #improvisationalpiecing, something somebody else tagged me with. She said she'd been looking for quilters working "in the Gee's Bend lineage" and couldn't find nobody who wasn't already famous and priced out of reach. I sold her a quilt for $800. She found it through a tag I didn't even know existed. I got regular customers, Lord bless 'em, the ones who buy baby quilts and lap quilts for their mama. That's steady money. But the people who find me through these art-world tags, they're a different kind of buyer entirely. They want the story. They want the history. They don't blink at the price. Makes me think I'm posting for the wrong audience half the time. But I don't have the energy to chase two worlds at once. Y'all got any advice on that?

Had a woman in the studio last week. She saw a small collage I made from a 1920s Swedish grammar book page and some torn map fragment, and she spent a solid twenty minutes explaining to me that it was about the fragmentation of national identity in post-industrial Scandinavia. I said it was about liking the yellow of the map against the grey of the paper. She looked at me like I'd said something stupid. Maybe I had. But also maybe that piece is just me being picky about two colours that sit well together and leaving most of the page empty because empty feels right. Not everything is a statement. Some things are just a decision about where to stop cutting.