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After years of being afraid of it, I raised my hourly rate from €45 to €65 at the beginning of this year. Not a dramatic jump. Reasonable for someone with my training and experience. I lost three regular clients in the first month. One of them told me I was "becoming expensive for a local painter." The other two just went quiet. And you know what? The commissions I've taken since then have been better. More interesting subjects, less revision demand, people who actually understand what they're asking for when they say "can you make the light softer." The clients who left were the ones who saw me as a service provider, not a painter. They wanted cheap, they got what they wanted somewhere else. I still feel a little guilty about the one who was a friend of a friend. But I did the math and I was earning less per hour than my daughter makes babysitting. That's not sustainable. That's not even dignified. If you raise your prices and nobody leaves, you probably didn't raise them enough. That's what my old teacher told me and I thought it was cynical. Now I think it's just true.

ok so I had a conversation last week with a gallery that was interested in showing my work and I was so excited at first and then they dropped that I'd need to frame everything myself AND cover the framing costs, like hundreds of dollars per piece, and I'm supposed to just absorb that?? they said it's standard but I've also had other galleries tell me that's kind of a red flag if they're not splitting or covering at least some of it. I haven't signed anything yet and now I'm second-guessing the whole thing. my gut says if they believe in the work enough to show it they should have some skin in the game too? or am I being naive here. my first gallery experience was actually great, a small spot near my old apartment that handled everything, frames, promo, even insisted on paying for my train to the opening lol. so maybe that spoiled me. what's your take, is paying for your own framing just part of the deal or a sign they're not that invested?

Been meaning to say this for a while. If you're welding galvanized steel in your studio without proper ventilation, stop. The zinc oxide fumes will give you something called metal fume fever. Feels like the worst flu of your life for about 24 hours. I got it once in my twenties working on a stair railing in a garage with the door half open. Thought I was dying. Called my father thinking it was a heart attack. He told me to drink milk and go to sleep. Actually worked, but I wouldn't recommend the experience. Wear a respirator. Not a dust mask. A proper respirator with the right cartridges. Or grind the galvanization off the weld area first. Takes an extra ten minutes and saves you a day of shaking on the bathroom floor. That's all. Just something nobody warned me about and I keep seeing people skip.

I had a gallery in Delhi showing interest in my Mithila work. Very excited I was. Then they said, you will arrange framing yourself and also deliver to the venue at your own cost. For a group show, not even solo. I thought the gallery handles presentation side no? Otherwise what is the gallery doing. I told them sorry ji, this arrangement does not work for me. Maybe I lost an opportunity but it felt wrong. What is your experience with this? Which costs the gallery should cover and which the artist bears? I am still learning the business side after so many years of just painting. 🙏

I still remember the first gallery I walked into cold with my portfolio. It was a small natural-history gallery in a city I didn't know well, and I had rehearsed what I would say roughly forty times on the train. The owner was polite, asked to keep the portfolio overnight, and called the next day to say she didn't have room on the walls but she'd keep me in mind. She never did call back, but the experience taught me something about just showing up. What happened with yours? Did anyone say yes, or was it a quiet no that you learned from anyway?

I had a big print deadline, 40 editions for a group show in Milan, and I just stopped posting. No stories, no carousels, no polite little "in the studio" clips. Nothing for almost nine weeks. I was sure my engagement would be dead when I came back. Instead I gained followers. Not a lot, but more than I did in the three months before where I was posting twice a week. And the people who messaged me were actual humans I've met or worked with, not the usual ghost likes. I don't know what to make of this. Maybe the algorithm prefers scarcity. Or maybe when you're not performing, the only people who show up are the ones who actually care about the work. Which is a nicer thought but also harder to monetise, so I'm not sure it's useful. Anyone else had the experience of doing less and getting more?

I once walked into a "gallery" that was really a framing shop with a few things on the wall. They wanted 50% and I had to deliver everything framed myself. I said no and the woman acted like I was the unreasonable one. What's the most confusing gallery experience you've had, the one where you weren't sure if you were talking to a gallerist or something else entirely?

just got an email from a gallery i was excited about, they want me to ship insured, but when i asked what value they want me to declare, they said "whatever you think is appropriate." like that's not how insurance works?? i'm pretty sure i already know the answer here but i'd love to be wrong, is this normal? did i just dodge a bullet or am i being paranoid? for context my last gallery experience was the one that strung me along for six months and then ghosted, so my radar could be off.

Y'all ever walk into a gallery and they say yes so fast it gives you pause? I had one a few years back, lady barely looked at my photos, just said "love it, we'd be honored, let's get you on the calendar." And you know what? It was all talk. Never returned a single email after that. I've learned the hard way that a quick yes don't always mean a good yes. Sometimes the ones that take their time, ask real questions, want to see the work in person, those are the ones that follow through. What's your experience? Did a fast yes ever work out for you, or did it fizzle like mine?

A friend from years ago asked me to paint her daughter's portrait for her 18th. I said yes at €600, already half what I'd charge a stranger for a 50x60cm oil on linen. She's a friend, fine. Then the emails started. "Could you do it from these five photos instead?" "Actually she's wearing a different dress now, can you change the colour?" "Her hair is shorter than that photo shows." "My mother thinks the background should be lighter." I repainted the face from new reference, adjusted the dress twice, scraped and repainted the background. All told I probably spent close to 25 hours on a painting that should have taken maybe 12. At my usual hourly rate for commissioned work that comes out to about €24 an hour. My assistant, who stretches canvases, makes €16. So I earned roughly the same as the person who stretches my canvases, for a job that required twenty years of training. The friend was happy. The daughter cried when she saw it. Beautiful moment. I don't regret it exactly. But I sat down afterwards and did the math and realised I'd basically given her a €1,200 painting plus a free workshop in how to manage an artist. Never again without a contract that says: one reference, one revision, anything beyond that is a new fee. Curious if anyone else has a number attached to the "learning experience" of a commission that ran away from you.

I'm preparing to reach out to a few galleries and I'm wondering about the best approach. Cold emailing feels efficient, but I've also heard some curators prefer a studio visit or a physical submission. Is a well-crafted email enough to get your foot in the door these days, or is it usually a waste of time without a personal connection or prior introduction? I'm curious about your experiences.

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

I had this portrait I did last summer, a woman with her hair caught in wind, all warm ochres and pale blue. I was so proud of it at first, then after a few months I started seeing everything wrong with it. The jaw was off. The pastel dust had settled into the paper grain in a way I didn't like. I kept it in my studio, didn't even photograph it properly for Instagram. I mentioned it in passing to someone at a small market stall I was sharing last month, just complained actually, that I had this piece taking up space and nobody wanted it and maybe it was just a failed experiment. She asked to see it. I pulled it out reluctantly. She bought it on the spot. Not because I pitched it well. Because I stopped trying to make it sound like something it wasn't. I've been thinking about that a lot. How much energy I spend polishing the story around my work, making it sound impressive, desirable, worth someone's time. And the one time I just said "this thing exists and I'm not sure it's even good" it worked better than any of my careful descriptions ever did. Maybe the selling is in the honesty, not the framing. I don't know. I'm still figuring it out.

so i had this gallery hit me up a while back, really wanted to rep me, but they wanted first right of refusal on everything i made + i couldn't sell anything elsewhere without their okay. cool. fine. except in the six months we worked together they sold exactly one small piece and i turned down like four commissions because of the contract. i get that exclusivity is standard for some folks but at what point is it just them tying you up so you can't build momentum anywhere else? i pulled out and felt guilty about it for a week and then realized i was being an idiot. anyone else had the "we want all your work but we won't sell any of it" experience? how long did you stick it out before you bounced

I teach a beginner botanical watercolour class at the local art centre twice a year, and I start every session the same way: I hand everyone a sheet of cheap cellulose paper and tell them to paint a leaf on it. The groaning is predictable. But I want them to feel what bad paper does before they ever touch the good stuff. I want them to experience the buckling, the pilling, the muddy washes that happen when the sizing fails. Because until you've fought a losing battle against a sheet of Canson student-grade, you don't really understand why you're paying for Arches. It's the same reason I still keep a block of that wretched paper in my own studio. Every few months I pull it out and paint a study on it, just to remind myself. It keeps me honest about technique. You can't fudge your way through a wash on paper that won't hold it. You have to be deliberate.

i spent like three years trying to do instagram right. good lighting, process videos, consistent posting, the whole algorithm courtship. and it got me... some likes from other artists. nice, but nobody buying. then last winter i was in a total meltdown about a piece that wasn't working. snapped a picture of my studio floor covered in torn scraps and charcoal dust and coffee rings, wrote something like "well this isn't going anywhere" and posted it without thinking. that one post got more replies than anything i'd done that year. two people commissioned work from it. so now i just send the ugly stuff. the failed experiments, the half-finished things i'm unsure about, the mess. i think people want to see the struggle, not the finished product. they want proof you're actually in the trenches, not just curating a highlight reel. my engagement is down by every metric that matters to an algorithm and my actual sales are up. make it make sense.

not a sketchbook, not a journal. it's a cardboard box under my worktable. failed experiments, pieces i started and hated halfway through, collages that just wouldn't lay right. things i cut up and tried to save and made worse. i told myself i was keeping them to learn from. but honestly i think i just can't throw them away. they're like artifacts of a version of me that was trying something and missed. feels wrong to trash that. pulled one out today. a painting i abandoned last february. thick muddy acrylics, wrong composition, everything fighting everything. i scraped at it with a palette knife for a while and something actually started to happen. might not save it but it's not dead yet either. anyone else keep the ugly ones around?

Hey everyone! Okay so I'm still pretty new to this whole gallery thing and trying to get a feel for timelines. Like, after you started seriously submitting or approaching galleries, how long did it actually take you to get that first real 'yes' or even a solid offer? Was it like months, a year, longer?? I'm trying to manage my expectations haha. My first approach felt like a total shot in the dark and I'm still waiting to hear back, so just curious about what others' experiences have been! 🙂