Search

A gallery in Berlin asked if they could document my studio as it is right now. Dust, the collapsed table, the half-finished thing from 2019 I keep meaning to throw out. I said yes so theyd stop asking, and now they want to show it as an installation. Somebody else's trash is art, your own is a mess. I worked decades to get out of rooms like this and now they want to put the room in a room. I should be flattered, probably. Instead I am thinking about which corner to clean and hating myself for thinking it.

i had a gallery tell me once that the "standard model" was a $500 fee for a group show, plus they took 40% of anything that sold. i laughed because i thought they were joking. they weren't. i walked. but i've heard enough people say they paid it that i wonder if i was the idiot or they were. anyone else run into pay-to-play? did you ever do it, and was it ever worth it?

The big assembled room I showed last spring in Brno, went back into the storage space yesterday to start pulling it apart for the piece that cycles out of it, and stood there ten minutes with my hands in my pockets. The far wall, the one I was proudest of when we hung it, is dead. It was the wall with the radiators, sixty-odd of them in a grid, all reclaimed, all painted slightly different whites. I thought the repetition did the work. It does nothing. It's a wallpaper. There's no friction in it. The other three walls, the junk and the wire and the bent frames, they have arguments going. The radiator wall just sits there agreeing with itself. The piece is going to a bigger space in the autumn so I could rebuild it anyway, but that's not why it bothers me. It bothers me that I couldn't see it a year ago. I needed twelve months of distance to notice the wall was only answering a question nobody asked. Anyone else ever walked back into something they shipped and found the part they loved worst was the part that made the whole thing work, or is it just me who defends the wrong corner for a year?

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 have this shallow drawer in my flat-file that's just chaos. Scraps of paper too small to use, edges I trimmed off, bits of envelopes, a receipt from an exhibition in Copenhagen three years ago, one single glove. Everything else in the studio is ruthlessly ordered, papers sorted by colour and weight, tools in their places. But that drawer is a mess and I can't bring myself to clean it. I think it's because if I sorted it, all those tiny bits would stop being potential and just become trash. As long as they're in the drawer they might still be something. I know that's not rational. But I don't think the studio needs to be rational everywhere.

Most of the questions here are about getting in. I would like to ask about the warning signs. I'll go first, and it is not flattering to me. Fifteen years ago a small gallery took four of my watercolours for a group exhibition. The owner wanted a 50% commission, wanted the frames changed to match his other stock, and asked me to drop my prices "for the room." I told myself it was a learning experience and signed anyway. He sold one, paid me four months late, and used a scan of my Fritillaria on the cover of a brochure for a completely different show without asking. I should have walked at the framing conversation. That was the moment, and I knew it while it was happening. So, the question: what is the earliest red flag you have seen in a gallery, and did you ignore it or walk away? One that turned out fine is just as interesting to me as one that went badly. I would like to know what a warning sign actually looks like from the inside, before the benefit of hindsight. I am not asking anyone to name names, and I would rather you did not. I am asking what the sign was.

Found a little screwdriver in my coat pocket today. The kind that folds open, cheap steel, worn wooden handle. I have owned it since I was maybe twenty three. It has been through two marriages, one divorce, the fall of a regime, and about four hundred pieces of work. I do not remember ever buying it. It just exists, like a cat that moved in and never left. I think the thing I keep is not the tool. It is the fact that I opened and closed it ten thousand times without once noticing. You want proof you were alive somewhere, it is not in the exhibitions. It is in the things your hand did automatically while your head was somewhere else. Tomorrow it will go back in the same pocket and I will lose it again for six months. Fine. That is our arrangement.

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.

got almost six months of "we love your work, we're just waiting on the next exhibition cycle" from a gallery. emails, coffee, even brought in more pieces. then one day it's "we've decided to go a different direction." no explanation, no sorry, nothing. i was so embarrassed i didn't tell anyone for weeks. then one of my friends who's been doing this way longer said "that's just what they do, they never say no." apparently it's a whole thing?? they keep you warm as a backup. what's the worst way a gallery has brushed you off? the silent ghost, the vague "not the right fit," or the straight-up lie about coming back to you?

alright here's one that's been rattling round my head. I did a group show maybe three years back, decent gallery, nice space, did the whole song and dance. Sold three prints. Got my cut six months later after chasing it twice. Grand, that's the game, I know. but the same summer I did a one-night thing in a mate's pub in Salthill. Hung stuff on the wall with picture wire and blu-tack. Sold five prints off a stack on the bar and took cash in a jar. Made four times what the gallery paid me and had a feed of pints out of it. I'm not knocking galleries, I've had great ones. But I'm wondering, have ye ever done something scrappy and unpolished that outsold the proper exhibition? Like a studio open day, a market stall, a pop-up in someone's living room. What worked? What felt mad but actually paid?

My first gallery, I did not go to them. They came to the village, a lady from Delhi who had seen our cooperative's exhibition photos. She sat on the floor with my mother and drank chai and asked about the fish motif. Three months later my paintings were in Delhi. I did not even know such a thing could happen. So I ask you all, from your own experience: did your first gallery come to you, or did you go to them? And whichever way it was, do you think that made a difference in how they treated you? For me I feel when they come to you, they value the work first. When you go to them, you are the one asking. Maybe I am wrong ji, tell me.

A collector bought a piece this spring and when I asked what caught their eye they didn't mention the studio work, the process shots, the exhibition photos the gallery put out. They said it was a story I posted at nine in the morning of my coffee on the bench next to an unfinished canvas, mostly out of frame, half the image out of focus because the phone was still waking up. The painting was two years old by then. It had been in two group shows. Nobody bought it. And the thing that sold it was basically an accident, a photo I took without thinking so my wife would know I was still alive in the studio. I've spent twenty-five years learning how to make the work and maybe five learning how to show it. And the showing still defeats me, daily. But I notice the accidental stuff does more than the deliberate stuff, and I don't know what to do with that information. I can't manufacture accidents on purpose. I tried. It shows.

I quoted a collector €480 for a 60x80 interior. Sold it, framed it, delivered it. Then I kept notes like I used to and counted: 30 hours from drawing to the last glaze. Sixteen euros an hour, and that's before the pigments and the linen and the four months it sat drying in my studio. The part that sits badly is that nobody forced me. The client never balked, never haggled. I set the number, and I set it too low, and I knew it while I was writing the invoice. There's a fear in the hand that writes a price, a little flinch you can feel. It gets better with practice but it never fully leaves. What helps me when it's my own fault: I price exhibitions with a conversation first, not a number out of the air. "What's the wall, what's the size, what's it worth to you." Sometimes people name a figure higher than I would have dared. That's information. You just have to sit there and not correct them.

Genuinely curious about this, because I think we all imagine the "they discovered me" story but I've noticed most people I know actually did the awkward thing themselves. Mine was terrible. I showed up at a small gallery near MG Road with a folder of prints, no appointment, and the owner looked at me like I'd wandered in to ask for directions. I basically shoved two paintings at her and fled. Nothing came of it for a year. Then she called me out of nowhere asking if I'd show in a group exhibition. Just like that. So I still don't know if it counts as walking in or being found. Which one was it for you? Did you knock on doors, or did someone come to you?

six months of emails. "we love the direction." "let's revisit after the summer show." meanwhile my inbox stayed quiet and my work sat in my studio getting dusty. then last week they post the lineup for the fall exhibition. same slot they'd been hinting at for me. filled with someone whose whole thing is neon resin pours that all look like the same puddle. i'm not even mad at the other artist. i'm mad at myself for treating "maybe" like a yes for half a year. should've kept pushing my own thing instead of holding my breath for them. everyone says don't wait for permission. i believed it until an actual door cracked open and i stood there politely waiting for it to open the rest of the way. that's the part that stings. anyway. the market crowd keeps buying, so it's not like the work's dead. just wondering how many "maybes" i let keep me small.

I teach a watercolor workshop twice a year and I've noticed something I keep turning over. My students, most of them a decade or two younger, post every sketch, every failed wash, every reel of paint mixing. Their follower counts are triple mine. Meanwhile my studio sits on an Instagram account with about 1,100 followers, most of whom have been there since 2016 and probably don't even look at it anymore. The commissions still come, but they come through word of mouth, through the gallery, through someone who saw my work in a botanical garden exhibit two years ago. Not once through social media. I've tried the process videos. I've tried the timelapses. I find them slightly embarrassing to make, and the engagement was never more than a polite ripple. I'm not drawing a lesson from this. I say it because at forty-seven, I've stopped being able to tell whether I'm bad at social media or whether social media simply rewards a kind of performance I'm not interested in giving. My students deserve their audiences; they work for them. But I wonder how many of them will still be painting in twenty years, and whether the audience will still be there when the algorithm moves on to something else. I keep painting either way. The paper doesn't care about engagement.

My gallery suggested it as a favour, half-joking, because I keep sending them photos of paintings that look flat and dead in a jpeg. So I found a student from the academy, a video person, and let her follow me around for three days. Scraping back a layer, mixing cold wax, the stupid thing where I stand and stare at the wall for twenty minutes. I figured it would be nothing. She cut it into forty seconds and posted it herself. I did not look at the comments for two days because I was sure it would be embarrassing, the way I always look slightly annoyed working, and then the gallery called me and said my inbox was full. I don't know what to do with this. I spent twenty years building a reputation the slow way and a clip of me scraping paint off a canvas has done more for attention than any exhibition opening I've had since 2019. It is not the work. It is me looking like I am concentrating, which I am, but so is everyone. I am not going to pretend the attention is bad. But I am old enough to know that this is a different kind of currency and I do not yet know what it buys, or what it costs me to keep minting it. The kid wants to come back and film the next piece start to finish. I said yes. I have no idea if that was wise.

My daughter, she studies in Patna now, came home for Diwali and saw me sitting with the brush and she said, Baba why are you not putting this on the phone. I told her I don't understand all this. So she took the phone, and she made one of those short videos, just my hand and the brush and the fish I was drawing, not even twenty seconds. She put some music on top which I found too loud, but I said nothing. In one week people came to my stall asking for the fish painting. A lady from Delhi bought two. A girl came and said she saw me on Instagram and wanted to learn. All this after I spent so many years doing exhibitions and cooperative meetings the proper way. I felt like such a fool ji, that the thing I ignored was the thing that worked. Now I am learning. My niece is teaching me to hold the phone steady while I paint. But I am also worried. The video showed the fish and the peacock, but nobody saw the ten years behind that line, the discipline, the ritual, the grandmother who taught my mother who taught me. I want the buyers but I also want them to know this is not decoration, this is our history. How do I put the history in a twenty second video without losing the people.

A gallery once told me my etchings were "too cerebral" and asked if I could make them "more decorative." I was 29 and said yes. Spent three months flattening the work, then they never exhibited it anyway. I still think about that. What's the worst thing a gallery has asked you to change about your work, and did you do it? I'm genuinely torn between "never bend" and "some bending is just the game." I've had both go badly.

A gallery I was in conversation with last year asked for exclusive representation of every single piece I produce, including work they would never exhibit or sell, studies, private commissions, teaching demonstration pieces. I told them no, and the conversation ended rather quickly. Has anyone else run into this kind of exclusivity clause? Where do you draw the line? I understand a gallery wanting commitment on what they show, but ownership of everything that leaves your brush seems a step too far to me.