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OMG you guys I actually did it. That big commission for the hotel lobby? The one I've been talking about for weeks that was making me so anxious I could barely sleep? It's boxed up and gone to the shipper. I almost cried when I handed it over, not gonna lie, it felt like saying goodbye to a piece of myself after staring at it for so long, but it's done. It's such a relief, I can finally breathe and maybe even paint something just for me again. I think this calls for pizza tonight haha. So happy it's out of my hands and on its way!

was moving a canvas through the studio yesterday and muttered "sorry, it's not finished" to literally no one. just me and a blank wall. caught myself and had to laugh cause that's the whole disease, right, pre-apologizing for work nobody asked about. i do it at shows too, "this one's a bit weird" before someone's even looked at it, like i'm softening the blow for myself. trying to log how many times a day i do it. told a friend the piece was "rough" yesterday and they were like... it's a goddamn painting, it's not a rough draft, you're not on deadline for the american novel.

I've been painting seriously again for about six years now, and I still keep ending up with the same brand of paint I started with. I've tried the fancy ones at workshops, bought a couple tubes of stuff that cost $12 each, and I always go back to the $4 tubes from Michaels. Maybe it's just what I learned on and I'm used to the consistency. Or maybe I'm telling myself it doesn't matter to justify being cheap, ha. But honestly I got a tube of something nice at a workshop last spring and it dried out weird and I was annoyed. So I'm back to my usual. Anyone else stuck on a brand they probably should have outgrown by now?

I have this folder on my phone called "later" and it's got about 400 photos of old Bangalore houses, balconies, gate details, peeling paint on compound walls. I scroll through it constantly but I won't paint from most of them. There's no logic to it. Some of them are gorgeous, the light is doing exactly what I love. But I've decided they're not ready, and I don't know what "ready" even means. It's been two years of this folder growing. The houses themselves aren't waiting around for me. Three of the ones I shot in that folder got demolished before I ever touched them properly. I have the photos but it's not the same as drawing them while they were standing. My husband says just paint them, you're hoarding them like a miser. He's right, of course he's right. Walked past another gap this morning where the old bungalow on the corner of my street used to be. I keep getting outsketched by the wrecking ball, honestly. So today I'm going to open the folder, pick one actual house, and paint it. Even if it's terrible. Especially if it's terrible, maybe.

There's this moment in a watercolor where everything is still possible, the paper is wet, the pigment is doing its own thing, you haven't screwed anything up yet. It's like a little high honestly. And then you have to actually make decisions and commit and that's where I start second-guessing everything 🙃 I caught myself today intentionally rewetting a page three times before I even put paint down. Just... stalling. Because the potential feels safer than the painting. Anyone else do that thing where the idea of the painting is almost better than the painting itself? Or is that just me being weird about commitment lol

I spent nearly two weeks not painting. Not because I was busy, which I was, but because I kept telling myself I'd only start once I went to the art store and got proper cold-pressed paper. The good stuff. Something deserving of the sketch I had in my head. Finally today I was in front of the stationery shelf in a random supermarket near my mother's place, of all places, and they had these thin spiral-bound sketchbooks. Rough cartridge, ghost of a grain. The kind schoolkids use for drawing class. Ninety rupees or something. Bought it out of spite, basically. And I sat on my balcony this evening and painted the water tank on the neighbour's roof, just the tank and the wires and the late light hitting the wall behind it. Nothing ambitious. It took me forty minutes and the paper buckled a little where I overworked the wash, and the whole thing has that cheap-paper fuzz that I used to hate when I was in architecture school. I'm honestly a bit in love with it. That fuzz has a texture you can't get on the fancy stuff. Funny how the good paper became another excuse to not work. I'm going to give myself permission to ruin a few more of these cheap books before I even think about touching my nice blocks again.

i just dug through every drawer in this studio and discovered i own three tubes of burnt umber, all different brands, none of them more than half used. and not a single tube of black paint. not even a dried up one. i must have thrown the last one out at some point and just never replaced it. which is fine, i don't really use black straight out of the tube anyway. but it made me stop and think about what i reach for without noticing. burnt umber is basically my default for everything, shadows, underpainting, mixing down a color that's too bright. it's the first thing i squeeze out. and i didn't even know i was doing it until i saw three of them lined up like a little monument to autopilot. what's the thing you have five of without meaning to

Small win but it's been sitting with me. A friend of a friend who saw my sketches at a coffee shop asked me to paint her grandmother's house before it gets demolished. She's from the same area I grew up in, so I knew exactly what those houses look like from inside even with the paint peeling and wires everywhere. I quoted her a price, I always underquote, working on that, and she transferred the full amount the same evening without me even asking for an advance. Half the time I chase people for months after they say they'll buy. This lady just paid and said take your time, no rush. I delivered it yesterday and she cried. Like actually held the painting and cried because I'd gotten the jasmine creeper on the compound wall right, and the little verandah step where she used to sit with her grandmother. She said I should charge more. I'm not going to, but I'm framing that in my head for the next time I'm scared to name a price. Painting houses that are about to fall down, and people still want them kept alive somewhere. That's the whole thing na. Made my week.

There's this tiny chai shop near Shanti Nagar double road, been there for maybe forty years, tucked between a jewellery showroom and a building that's already been sold for redevelopment. I've been meaning to paint it for months but kept putting it off, too many people, too much traffic, too self-conscious to sit there with my sketchbook. Finally went this morning at 6am. Sat on a plastic stool, ordered chai I didn't even finish, and painted for two hours while the guy who runs the shop kept peering over my shoulder and saying "akka, colour kammi" meaning I wasn't using enough colour. He wasn't wrong. Came home and finished it on the table. And I don't know, I just sat there looking at it and felt something I don't feel often, like it actually came out the way I wanted. The light, the shadows from the awning, the old board with the faded name. Took a photo, sent it to my husband, and he said "that's the one" without me even asking. I never know how to take compliments on my work. But I think I'll frame this one. For myself.

Every time I sit down to a fresh sheet, handmade paper, the one I like from the Srikrishna batch we got last year, I tell myself I will do something new this time. A different composition. Maybe the wedding scene I have been thinking about since my niece's marriage last month. But my hand, it goes to the dhaan. The paddy stalks. That old motif curving from the corner, the grains full and heavy, dropping toward the bottom edge. My mother used to say it is not decoration, it is a prayer, for the land, for the stomach, for the season coming right. I put it in even when the painting is about Durga or the fish or the tree of life. Sometimes I hide it small behind a border so only the person who looks carefully will see it. My grandmother told me once: if you paint the dhaan enough times, the goddess will recognise your hand and bless your harvest. I was a boy then, I thought she meant the rice harvest. Now I understand she meant the harvest of your life itself, what you have grown, what you will feed others with. So today again, starting a new piece for an exhibition in Patna next month. And there it is. The paddy stalks already. I did not even decide. They just came. 🙏

I started timing my evening sessions and now I won't paint unless I've got at least a full 20 minutes, no exceptions. Sounds obvious but for years I'd sit down with like 12 minutes before I had to get the kids' lunches ready or whatever, and I'd just fight the whole time trying to warm up and make it count. Total waste. Now if I can't do 20 I don't even uncap the tubes, I just go to bed earlier and try again tomorrow. The difference in what comes out of those short focused blocks vs the frantic squeezed ones is night and day. Eleven year old asked what my superpower was and I said knowing when NOT to paint. She was not impressed.

got a response from a gallery i submitted to in 2022 the other day. "we've reviewed your work and would love to..." girl it's been two years. i have a whole different body of work. i'm a different person. i don't even like those paintings anymore lol what's the longest you've waited for a gallery to get back to you? and did you still take the meeting or were you petty about it like i was

ok so today at the market a guy stood over my shoulder while I was demoing a piece and goes "you know, if you just let the darks go darker, it would really pop." and I turned around and he had his phone in his hand, mid-swipe, not even looking at the painting when he said it. just walking by, glancing down at his feed, giving me unsolicited composition advice like he'd actually SEEN the thing. and the worst part is he wasn't even wrong!! the darks could go darker!! but I was doing a wet-on-wet wash and if I push pigment in wrong it's dingy forever and you can't undo that. so I just said "uh huh" and went back to it and he wandered off looking satisfied like he'd DONE something. why is it always the people who don't paint who think the fix is so obvious. like yes, sir, more pigment, why didn't the years of training occur to me. the difference between a dark that's alive and a dark that's just MUD is the whole game and you can't explain that to someone mid-swipe on their phone. I'm half tempted to start carrying a little sign that says "watercolor doesn't work that way" and just point at it. anyway if anyone else gets this please tell me so I feel less insane

I went to this gallery in a different city last year, showed them my portfolio, old Bangalore houses, chai stalls, morning light in a certain neighbourhood. And the gallerist looks at me and goes, "This is lovely, but can you make it look more Indian?" I didn't even know what to say. I paint what I see every day. What does "more Indian" even mean? She wanted bright Bollywood colours and lotuses or something, I think. Anyway I didn't take it further obviously. But it stuck with me, that assumption that your work needs to perform some idea of where you're from, rather than just being honest about what you actually see and paint. Anyone else ever been asked to "look more" like something? Or the opposite, told you're too X and should tone it down? What's the weirdest feedback a gallerist has given you about your identity or subject matter?

Went and looked at a space I was excited about, first meeting, and the guy says my work is "interesting but could use some polish." Told me my figures were "too raw" and asked if I'd consider softening things up for the clientele. I laughed at him. Literally laughed out loud. I do not paint things soft. That's the whole point of me. Walked out and never looked back. Still glad I did, but man it stings when you know they saw your work and just wanted a different person's work with your name on it. What's the worst note or comment a gallery or rep ever gave you? The one that made you question whether they even saw the same paintings you made?

my first big-ish gallery charged me a commission on a painting that hadn't even sold yet. found out months later and they had the nerve to call it "holding space". i was too scared to say anything, just paid it and never went back lol. what's the sketchiest thing a gallery ever tried to pull on you that you only realized way after it happened?

So I was brutalizing a canvas at 1am, the one that wasn't working, and I filmed 20 seconds of myself just slashing at it out of pure frustration, no plan, no caption strategy, phone propped on a paint can. Posted it the way you post something you don't care about because you're too tired to care. 106k views. My best planned post this month did 800. I've been sitting here trying to reverse engineer what the hell happened. Was it the rawness? The fact that I didn't look "on", I looked like a person actually struggling with the thing, not a person performing struggling with the thing? The lighting was garbage. I had no ring light. I genuinely look like a raccoon in it. It's making me question every polished thing I've put out. Like do people smell the production the way dogs smell fear. The comment section was full of people just... being honest about their own blocked creative work. Nobody even asked about the painting. It wasn't about the art. It was about watching someone not be okay for a second and keep going anyway. Anyway now everything I post feels fake in comparison and I hate that. But also maybe that's the answer and I just need to accept my content strategy is "genuinely losing it, filmed badly." 😭

My daughter came into the studio the other day, looked at the still life I'm working on, and asked why I don't just take a photo and paint from that. Not even mocking, just genuinely curious. She's sixteen and the camera is a reflex, like breathing. I tried to explain that the eye doesn't see like a lens. The lens flattens everything to the same plane of focus, it fixes the light at one instant, it gives you a truth that isn't the truth you actually saw. When I look at a table with a dish and a cloth, my eye moves. It lands on the edge of the bowl, rests on the shadow under the rim, comes back to the highlights. There's a kind of negotiation happening that a photograph never has. The photograph already decided. I don't think she was convinced. She kept looking at my canvas like it was the slower version for people who hadn't heard about the shortcut. And maybe part of me was annoyed, but another part thought she has a point about speed, we just don't want the same thing from it. I did end up using a photo for the initial drawing of the pears, because they were about to bruise and rot. But then I threw the photo aside and painted the rest from the arrangement as it aged. The pears changed as I worked. They kept their own time. That's the whole thing, I think. A painting should have time in it. A photograph has a fraction of a second.

There's a hotel in the old town here, small one, maybe fifteen rooms, family-run. The owner saw my work at a group show and asked if I'd do a large piece for their lobby, a view of the Saône at dusk, something calm. I said yes before I'd even thought about money. When we sat down to talk, he told me honestly he had almost no budget. The hotel barely survived COVID, they're still digging out. I said fine, I'll do it, just cover my materials. He looked relieved and ashamed at the same time. So I painted a 120x80 for the cost of oil and linen. About €280. The painting took me maybe sixty hours. I don't need to do the math again, I already did it and it's stupid. But here's the thing, it's in a place where people sit and look at it every morning over breakfast. The light in that lobby at certain hours is actually beautiful and the painting sits in it the way I hoped. I see it sometimes when I walk past. I don't regret it. I'm not saying this is a sustainable strategy. But a painting that lives well somewhere, even for nothing, I don't know. Sometimes that matters more than the hourly rate. And then sometimes I think I'm just telling myself that because I'm bad at business. Anyone else done a free or nearly-free piece that you still don't feel bad about?

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 🔥