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pulled something out today that I started last winter and gave up on. thought it was dead. charcoal on found paper, got about halfway into it and just... couldn't look at it anymore. shoved it behind some old frames and forgot about it. but I was digging for something else and there it was. and honestly? it's not bad. it's not finished either but the part I abandoned is actually the most interesting part now. I think I needed to stop caring about it to see what it was. anyway I worked on it for an hour just now. might wreck it again tomorrow. but there's something about letting a piece sit long enough that it becomes陌生 to you, like someone else made it and you get to have an opinion.

I find myself drawn to the silence more than ever lately. Trying to make something of the small gaps, the places where the usual marketing chatter just… isn't. It's not about ignoring the noise, but about finding the signal in the quiet. My own practice is very much about this – using found paper, old book pages, and leaving a lot of empty space. It’s about what’s not there as much as what is. Wondering if anyone else finds value in intentionally creating that space online, away from the constant performance.

my studio smells like that right now. found a box of my dad's old invoices from the 80s when i was cleaning out a cabinet. torn edges, faded ink. i think i'm going to incorporate some of it into the background of the current piece. it feels right, somehow. like bringing a ghost into the room.

A small gallery I've been talking to finally offered me a solo show for next spring. I was buzzing about it for like a day. Then they said the budget for materials is $200. I don't think they're trying to screw me. They're tiny. But $200 barely covers the paper and panel for one large piece, let alone the paint, the medium, the charcoal, the adhesive, the found materials I buy from estate sales. I'd be eating the rest myself and I already have a day job I hate. I said yes because the opportunity is real and I've been wanting this. But I'm already doing the math in my head and it's not great. I have about 8 months. I'm trying to figure out if I can pull this off without it costing me more than whatever I might sell. Anyone else done a show where the "support" was basically symbolic? How did you handle the gap without looking ungrateful?

A friend from art school, someone whose work I genuinely like, sold a paper piece at a fair in Stockholm for 12,000 SEK. Same size as what I do, similar material, similar time investment. I charge 3,500 for mine. We're at the same stage, we came out of the same program. I know I'm not being ripped off, I set my prices, nobody forced me. But the gap is hard to sit with. Makes me wonder if I'm undervaluing the work or if they're just better at selling. Probably both. I raised my small pieces by 500 SEK this month and it felt like a test I was going to fail.

A friend from years back messaged me wanting a print for her new apartment. Small thing, maybe A4 size. I said €80 because that's what I used to charge for that size before I stopped selling through galleries. Felt fair between friends. Then I went to buy the paper. Hahnemühle Platinum Rag, because anything cheaper buckles in the saltwater bath and I've learned that lesson the hard way. €22 just for the sheet. The frame I found was simple pine, nothing fancy, €18. Then the glass. Then I had to redo the exposure twice because the light was wrong last week, that's three sheets of paper now, and the third one I messed up the rinse and it came out streaky. I don't know what I think the paper and chemicals and framing should cost. But €80 for a thing that took three afternoons to get right and eats materials the way it does... I think I'm scared to charge what it actually costs because the number sounds too big for something blue on paper. And that's a me problem, not a market problem.

I made a cyanotype yesterday of a cuttlebone I found on the beach, one of those big ones, almost the length of my hand. Laid it directly on the paper with some torn fishing net over it. Exposure was good, the sun was strong, but when I washed it the shadows all went muddy. The cuttlebone reads as a dark blob instead of having that honeycomb texture it has on the surface. I think I underwatered my chemistry. Or maybe the paper was too dry when I coated it. I've been using a cotton rag paper I'm not as familiar with and it seems to drink the emulsion differently. I've been staring at it for an hour. Part of me wants to call it a bad print and toss it. Part of me thinks there's something in the flatness, like the sea at dusk, all that detail pulled under. But I don't know if I'm just making peace with a mistake. How do you tell the difference between a flaw that works and one that's just a failure?

I was clearing a drawer I've been avoiding and there it was, a spool of monofilament he must have tucked there years ago, the kind he used for the longlines. Faded, brittle, salt-stiff in places. I couldn't throw it out. So I laid a length across a freshly coated sheet of paper and let the sun do the rest. The line doesn't read solid like I expected. It leaves these thin, ghostly traces, almost like a thread of light that got caught. Faint interruptions where the sun wrapped around the curve of it. Where it kinked, the line lifted off the paper and the blue rushed in underneath. Those are my favourite parts. Little accidents he would have called coisa malfeita, badly made thing, but I think they're the most true. Anyway. He's been gone eight years and I still find him in the strangest places. Today he was in the sun, on paper, in that particular blue.

I've been trying to get this one reference right for months. Woman in profile, soft light from the side, nothing special about it except I couldn't stop seeing something in her expression that I kept missing on paper. 14 attempts. Some I abandoned after five minutes, one I worked on for three hours then wiped it clean with a cloth. Today I just sat down and did it in under an hour and I think I finally found it. Not perfect. But the thing I was chasing is there now. I sat staring at it for a good minute after and felt this... quiet. Like something settled. That doesn't happen often. Anyway I'm going to frame it maybe. Feels like I earned that. 🙂

I've been selling my small collages for 2,500 SEK (about €220) for three years now. They're maybe 20x30cm, framed, took me a week of looking and arranging to finish one I don't want to scrap. I know that's low. I know my materials cost is basically nothing, old book pages, found envelopes, but the time and the looking isn't nothing. And I know people buy them, so clearly the price isn't the problem. But I sit down to change it to 3,200 and I just... don't. I tell myself the market here is small. I tell myself paper work isn't taken as seriously. I tell myself I'm not established enough. All of which might be true but also none of it is the real reason, which is that I don't want to have to explain why I'm suddenly more expensive. I think I'm afraid of the conversation more than the number. Like someone will write and say "why is it more now" and I'll have to justify my own time out loud.

I had a newsletter for almost two years. Every two weeks, a studio note, what I was printing, the tide tables that week, a dried piece of seaweed I pressed between pages. Nothing pushy. Just the work. I stopped six months ago. Not because of open rates or unsubscribes. Because I realised I was writing for an audience I couldn't feel. The emails went out and something went into a void and maybe someone read them somewhere and maybe they didn't. I had no way to tell. I know the advice. Build your list. Own your platform. But I think there's something honest about admitting that not every kind of reach is worth having. The newsletter worked better on paper than it ever did in my gut. I've been quieter online since then. Posting less. Selling more through the people who find me through word of mouth and the local shop that carries my prints. It's slower. It also doesn't feel like I'm feeding something that never looks back. Anyone else stopped doing something that was supposed to be essential and found it didn't matter?

I have this one pair of embroidery scissors, very small, very old, I found them in my yiayia's sewing box after she died, probably from the 50s. I don't embroider. I don't sew. But they live on my workbench and I use them for exactly one thing: cutting the cotton thread I tie around bundles of smalti so they don't slide apart when I carry them from the shelf to the floor. Nothing else. If I need to cut string or paper or anything, I use something else. These scissors just do this one job. It's stupid. But there's something satisfying about having a tool that only exists for a single tiny task. Like a little ritual object. Anyone else have a tool like that, something absurdly specific that you keep around for one thing only?

My old desk lamp finally gave up today. One of those architect-style ones with the spring arm, bought secondhand when I was still in art school. I've replaced the bulb maybe four times, the shade is dented, the spring has a visible kink in it. But I knew exactly where to position it to get the light to fall on the paper the way I wanted. Now I'm standing in the studio with the overheads on and everything feels wrong, which is ridiculous because it's just a lamp. I went online to look for the same model and found it immediately. Haven't ordered it yet. I think what bothers me is the idea of a new one that doesn't have the dents and the history. That's not rational. Anyway. Currently working under the ceiling light like a person in a waiting room.

I've been working on a study of Fritillaria meleagris, the snake's head fritillary, and I keep running into the same problem with one particular passage. The grid pattern on the tepals requires a very controlled lift to get those pale chequered marks out of a darker wash, and my usual standby burnt sienna from Winsor & Newton is staining the paper in a way I can't work around. It's a lovely pigment for many things but it simply will not lift cleanly once it's dried for more than about thirty seconds. I've tried different papers, different dilution levels, even switching to a synthetic sienna from another brand, and the behaviour is the same. I know there are artists who pre-wet the area and work into a damp surface to avoid the problem, but that sacrifices the crispness of the edge I need. I wonder if some of you have found a particular brand or formulation of burnt sienna that lifts more cooperatively, or if you simply avoid it for this kind of work and use something else entirely. I am not ready to give up the colour, it is exactly the right earthy rust for this species, but I might have to adjust my method.