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walked into a gallery opening last week, guy comes up, says he's been watching my stuff online. my heart's pounding because holy shit someone noticed. then he says "your work has so much raw energy but you'd sell three times as much if you just... pulled it back a little. make it more accessible." i stood there holding my wine and wanted to cry and punch him at the same time. accessible. like what i'm doing is too MUCH. like the whole point is to make people comfortable. i spent years learning how to stop making polite art. i grew up in a house where we didn't talk about what was actually happening and i painted that way for so long, safe, quiet, looking good on the surface. i taught myself to tear that open and now someone wants me to smooth it back down so it matches their couch. i told him no and he gave me this little pity smile like i'd made a business mistake. maybe i did. don't care. art that doesn't cost you anything isn't worth looking at. i'll keep painting the ugly honest stuff even if it hangs in my hallway forever 🔥

I spent years putting only the final work online. Perfect lighting, good photo, the painting resolved. Crickets, mostly. A few likes from other painters. A few months ago I was frustrated with a figure painting, the hand was wrong for the fourth time, the whole thing looked a mess, and I took a photo of it on the easel with my palette旁边, just to vent to a painter friend. I put it on Instagram almost without thinking. That post got more comments than anything I'd put up in six months. People like to see the struggle. They like to see that you also don't know what you're doing for a while. I think for a long time I thought showing process would somehow diminish the finished work, like revealing the trick. But most people aren't painters. They have no idea what goes into it, and watching something get ugly and then get pulled back out of the ugly, that's the part they actually want to see. I'm still not comfortable with it. I was trained to show only the resolved thing. But I can't argue with the numbers, and more to the point I can't argue with the fact that the conversations are better. People ask real questions instead of just saying "beautiful." Wondering if anyone else has found that the unfinished, uncertain thing gets more traction than the polished final version.

Its a new found comfort talking to everyone that I have met on this app, the connections between artists are something I didnt quite experience, until recently, im truly grateful to be an artist

there's this one shitty wooden chair i bought for $8 at a garage sale six years ago. it's not comfortable. the seat is too hard and one leg is slightly shorter so it rocks a little. but if i try to paint sitting anywhere else, the couch, my desk chair, the floor, i literally cannot get into it. i'll sit there for 20 minutes mixing the same three colors and then go find something else to do. but that stupid chair? i sit down and my brain just switches over. it's like a sleeper agent activation code or something. i don't even think about it until i try to paint somewhere else and nothing happens. idk what the psychology is there. pavlov's uncomfortable painting chair. anyway i'm pretty sure my back is ruined in like 10 years but the paintings are getting done so we take those

For years I thought I was supposed to want fresh air. The romantic studio image, non? Open window, breeze, plein air feeling. I forced myself. This week I closed it. Put on the shitty little air conditioner I bought in secret. The light is exactly the same. The paint stayed wet longer because it wasn't drying out in a draft. I was calmer. I worked an hour past when I usually stop because I wasn't getting cold and annoyed. All that performative suffering for nothing. I could have been comfortable this whole time.

I got a commission last year for a new piece at a decent European museum. 12k seemed like real money when I signed. Then I priced the steel, the timber, the electronics for the sound element, the rented van to haul it all, the two assistants I had to pay properly because I'm not an exploitative prick. By the time the thing was built and installed I'd spent about seven and a half. The rest covered four months of my life. I ate it because the work was good and I wanted it to exist and I'll probably do it again. The math never works if you count your own time. You have to not count it. That's the trick. You make art because you're compelled to and you finance it however you can and you pretend the hours don't exist. But sometimes late at night you do the math anyway and it's genuinely funny how bad it is. Like actually funny. I laughed out loud when I worked it out. Younger artists ask me how to price things. I tell them charge more than feels comfortable and then double it. Then I watch them not do that and I understand completely because I also don't do that.