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So a woman from a little gallery in Ghent messages me about a show, wants three of the leaning vessels, and then writes the sentence I've now read about forty times: "we can offer you exposure and a small participation fee." I read it twice. Small participation fee. Meaning I pay her. I said no thanks, and she got a bit cold after that, like I was the unreasonable one. And maybe I am? Because everyone around me keeps saying you have to do these things when you're starting, that the shows build the CV, that the CV sells the work later. My father said almost exactly this over lunch Sunday, in between asking when I'm going to "get serious." But the last time I said yes to a thing like this, I shipped four pieces to a space I'd never seen, paid 60 euros in crates and shipping, and sold one. One. The other three came back with a chip on the foot of the biggest one. I've still got it here, I use it for brushes. I don't know. Maybe I'm being stubborn and there's some version of the math where this pays off in three years. But I keep thinking about my grandmother, who ran a stall in the market in Ruzafa for thirty years, and her rule was simple: the work costs what it costs. She never once paid anyone for the privilege of selling her own oranges. Not asking anyone to agree with me here. Just tired of being made to feel greedy for wanting to be paid.

i still think about the gallery owner who spent twenty minutes telling me about their "exposure package" and what it would normally cost an emerging artist, as if i was supposed to be grateful they were waiving the fee i'd never have paid in the first place. what's the most creative payment offer you've gotten from a gallery? i'll start, someone once offered me a split where they'd take 60% AND i had to cover my own materials. when i blinked they said "think of the foot traffic."

Myself Ramesh. I will tell you one thing that still makes me shake my head. Some years ago a gallery in Delhi saw my Mithila work at a craft mela and said they would love to show it. I was happy, very happy. But when I went to meet them they explained, no payment for the artwork, no guarantee of sale, and I must pay for the framing and my own travel. They said it is good for exposure, it will build my name. I asked them, can my family eat exposure? They did not like that question ji. I walked away. Since then I have done a few cooperative gallery shows where terms were fair, but that first offer I still remember. So I am asking you all, have you ever taken a deal where you worked for only exposure or very little? Was it worth it in the end or did you regret? I want to know your stories so younger artists can learn.

Okay so I finally snapped and did the thing we all joke about. A company reached out wanting me to paint a custom piece for their office lobby – 4ft wide, specific color palette, tight deadline – and their budget was "we can offer you great exposure on our social channels!" I get it, I'm small, I'm new at this full-time thing, I know how it goes. But I was just so tired. So I wrote up a proper invoice. Line item for materials, line item for labor (30 hours estimated, at my usual rate), and then a third line item: "Exposure Package – $0.00" and under it I wrote "As discussed, this project will be compensated primarily through visibility. Please see attached screenshot of my Instagram analytics for reference on the value of this exposure to your brand." I attached a screenshot of my engagement rates and follower growth over the last quarter. And I sent it. Honestly I expected them to just ghost me and I was fine with that, it felt good to send it. But the marketing director actually wrote back and said "touche" and they came back with a real number. Not a great number, not gonna lie, it was still kind of low. But it was real money and I took it because honestly I needed the work and I figured okay, at least now we're having an honest conversation about what this is. I don't know if I'd do it again, it felt a little snotty. But it also felt like the first time I actually treated my own work like it had value instead of just hoping someone else would. Anyone else done something petty that actually kind of worked??

got the email again. "we'd love you to paint a mural for our new cafe, no budget right now but it'll be GREAT exposure and so many people will see it." the last three "exposure" jobs got me exactly zero paying clients and a sore back. exposure does not pay for a single tube of cadmium red. i decided this was the year i learned to say no and apparently the universe is testing me on day one

i spent years telling myself "exposure" was a scam word and mostly i still think that. but last fall i did a mural for a coffee shop that paid me in store credit and i was so broke i said yes just to eat for a month. dudes at the counter every morning, one of them turned out to be an art director for a local agency and he asked who painted the wall. that one conversation led to a real paying gig and the coffee shop is still free for me. so the takeaway is not "exposure works." the takeaway is "sometimes a shitty deal puts you physically in front of the right person," which is not a strategy, it's luck with extra steps. i still tell everyone who asks to get paid in cash. but i also can't fully pretend the free coffee mural was a mistake lol. hate that this is true.

some guy at a cafe yesterday saw me working on a sketch, came over, loved it, said he runs a "curated online gallery" (instagram account with 300 followers). wanted to feature me. for free. in exchange for "exposure to his network." i asked him how many sales his featured artists usually get from it. he said "well it's more about building relationships." so i said cool, let's build one where you pay me. he did not think that was funny. he left me his card anyway. the card had a stock photo of a paintbrush on it.

A man on the beach yesterday, watching me pin wet paper to a board in the wind, came over and asked if I could "fix the exposure" on a photo he'd taken of his wife. He had his phone out, already scrolling for it. I said this is not that kind of photography. He looked at the blue print, then at his screen, then back, and said oh, so it's like a filter. I didn't correct him. I just held the paper down and let the sun do its work while he walked off. But I've been turning it over all evening. Everything I do is slow and uncertain and half out of my control, and people keep wanting it to be a shortcut to something else. Nobody asks a painter if they can just crop it. Maybe it's my fault for working in public. The sea makes people think everything is easy.

Not a critique anyone gave me. Just something I have been sitting with all week. I have a photogram of a piece of fishing net I picked off the sand at Foz in October. The net is right. The edges are right. Twenty-two minutes under the sun, seawater wash, and every knot reads clean against the paper. Technically it is the best exposure I have made this year. And I feel nothing in front of it. It looks like a diagram of a net. The ones I keep pinned to the wall are all failures. A print from last winter where the wind moved the paper and the whole lower half smeared into a soft gray, and there, right at the smear, is something I have never been able to make on purpose. I have tried to reproduce it maybe forty times since. No luck. I am starting to think the accident is not a mistake I should be learning to control. It is the actual thing. I know some of you will say ruin it deliberately, and I have tried that too, and deliberate ruin looks exactly like what it is. There is a difference between a thing going wrong and a thing being let go of. Anyway. I am not looking for a fix exactly. Maybe just someone to tell me they have the same drawer of technically correct, spiritually empty work and what they did with it.

Early on, a gallery in Lisbon said they could only take my work if I gave them 60% and called the rest "exposure." I was young and said yes. I still wince about it. Did you ever say yes to one of those? Or did you walk away?

Group show in Berlin, 2019. Curator with a good reputation, well-known space, the whole thing sounded serious. She said there was no budget for artist fees but the exposure would be valuable. I was between shows anyway so I said yes like a fool. I built a room installation. Three weeks of work, rented a van to drive materials up from Prague, stayed in a friend's flat but still bought food and beer for two weeks, paid an assistant for two days of help mounting things. I kept receipts out of spite, I think. Total cost to me: 38,400 CZK. About 1,500 euros then. The exhibition got a mention in Artforum online. One collector came through and later commissioned a small piece. That commission paid 800 euros. So I lost 700 euros and gained a line in a newsletter nobody remembers. I tell young artists this story now and they nod and then they still do the same thing. I did it too when I was their age. Maybe you have to learn it yourself.

still mad about this years later. small gallery, decent space, said they loved my work. then the email came, they wanted me to pay for the opening drinks, pay for the printed invites, "cover my share of the marketing." i was young and almost said yes. what's the wildest thing a gallery has asked you to pay for? the one that made you laugh and hang up? i need to know i'm not the only one who almost fell for it.

Beautiful morning for it, so I carried my coated papers down to the rocks before the sun got bold. Wind gusting, spray landing on the corners of three sheets. I left them anyway. The salt marks are part of the print now, little white freckles where the water sat on the emulsion before it dried. I didn't plan that. The sea did. I keep fighting this instinct to control everything. Sun time, water temperature, how long I leave the paper under. Then a day like today reminds me the whole point is I'm not in charge. I just hold the paper down. Developed them in seawater like always, and one came out lighter than I intended, almost faint, like a memory of a tide. I think it's my favourite. I'll sell the "correct" ones and keep that one. Almost forgot to eat lunch again. The winter swims keep me honest about that, at least.🙂

three 24x36 acrylics for a small restaurant, $350 total, which is already embarrassing when i think about it. they loved them. framed them nice, hung them where people actually see them. then the owner asked if i'd paint a mural on the patio wall "in exchange for the visibility" and i caught myself going "yeah sure" in my head before my body caught up. visibility doesn't pay my rent, karen. it pays in likes from people who will also want a discount. did the math on the original three after the fact: about 14 hours each including sketches and the two repaints because they wanted the napkins color-matched to the wall. so $8.33 an hour. an hour. i could have just worked at the restaurant and the paintings would've been free. i said yes to the mural anyway. negotiating $200 and the owner looked hurt, like i'd asked them to donate a kidney. why is it always the people with the least money who are most offended when you ask to be paid for your time. i don't know if this is a pricing vent or a confession but it's both. next time i'm charging hourly upfront and i will simply endure the awkward silence.

So a gallery I was talking to, small, not huge, but seemed legit, wanted me to ship them a bunch of pieces on consignment, cover the shipping myself, no guarantee anything would sell. I asked about the split and they sent me their "artist agreement." 70/30 their way. For a solo show. And I'd be paying for the opening night drinks out of my 30%. I laughed and said no obviously. But I'm still thinking about it, what IS normal these days? Like what's an actual fair split for a small gallery that's actually doing the work? I've heard 50/50, I've heard 60/40 artist-favoring, I've heard some places do 70/30 the artist's way if the artist is bringing the collectors. What are y'all actually seeing out there? What's walking-around real vs what's them trying it?

Alright, let's hear the worst gallery pitch you ever got. The one that made you laugh or almost made you walk. Mine: A new space in a nearby city, wanted 50% commission, and when I hesitated the owner said "but we'll really push you on social media." I told her my cats have more followers than that and at least they don't take half. What's yours? The fee that was insulting, the promise that was empty, the red flag you wish you'd spotted sooner.

I've been working without a clock all week. Cyanotype needs sun and it needs a certain patience, and I got tired of crouching over the prints with my phone in my hand like some kind of anxious parent. So I just put three pieces out this morning and left them. Went back to the kitchen, made coffee, forgot about them properly. One came out almost white, the clouds had moved in and I'd missed it. Another one went so dark the seaweed disappeared into the blue entirely. But the third one, that one had been out during the exact hour the light was right, and it's the best thing I've made in a month. The paper knew better than my timer did. My grandmother used to say the tide waits for no one, but the sun is more forgiving. It comes back tomorrow. Not sure I'm going back to the stopwatch. Worth losing a few prints for the ones that actually listen.

A woman from a hotel group in Lisbon emailed last week about two of the blue prints. Not for a gallery wall. For a bathroom, one of those big ones with the freestanding tub and the single olive branch. The fee they offered: 180 euros for both, printed, for three years. I buy my paper from a small place in Barcelona. A single sheet of the heavy cotton is almost 9 euros now, and I ruin about one in four between coating and washing. That is before the sea, the hours, the fix. I said no, politely, and she wrote back that their budget was fixed and it was "a lovely exposure for the work." The exposure line. I keep thinking about how many people have said it to me and how little it has ever done. Once, years ago, I let a magazine use a print for free and I did get two sales from it, so I cannot say it never works. But 180 for two, printed, was not a negotiation, it was a rounding error for them. I am not asking how to price things. I know my number. I am just tired of the moment in the email where the other person decides my materials do not count.

I used to write these careful captions about cyanotype chemistry, the UV exposure times, the pH of the seawater I develop in. Thought people needed to understand the craft to appreciate the print. Then I posted a photo of a print that went completely wrong, overexposed, paper curled, the blue almost black, the seaweed I'd placed shifting mid-exposure so the whole thing was a ghost. I wrote "The sun moved and so did I. This one belongs to the Atlantic now." It got more engagement than any of my tidy process posts. People commented about their own ruined things, the work they'd abandoned, the projects that fell apart. A gallery owner in Amsterdam messaged me asking if I had more "failures" available. I don't think people want to understand how it's made. I think they want to feel that they're allowed to make mistakes too. So now I show the ones that didn't work, alongside the ones that did. The studio floor after a bad week. The prints I fished out of the tide at the wrong moment. The work sells the same. But the conversations are different.

I quoted $3,800 for a public piece last year. Steel and stone, about nine feet, welded on site. The client loved it. Then it went to their committee and they came back offering half, take it or leave it. I took it. I knew better. That's the part that sits wrong. I've been doing this thirty years and I still said yes because I wanted to see the thing built and I told myself the exposure mattered. Exposure doesn't pay for the 200 hours I put in. Worked out to about nine bucks an hour before materials. The piece is still standing in front of their building and it's good work. But I taught that committee that my number has a hundred percent of give in it. They'll never pay full price from me again, and I'll never get that baseline back with them. Holding your price is a skill and I apparently still haven't learned it.