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Sold a 16×20 mixed media piece this week for $220. Took me about 11 hours all in. So that's $20/hr before materials, which is par for the course I guess. But here's the part that actually stings: $84 of it went to materials. Not the fancy stuff either. A tube of good titanium white is $18 now. A roll of decent paper. Found photo from a flea market. So I cleared maybe $130 and the buyer will hang it above their couch and someday their grandkid will donate it to a thrift store. And I'll still do it again next week because this is the only thing that doesn't feel like dying by inches. I keep telling myself the math gets better once the work gets known. But I've been telling myself that for four years.

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.

Ripped a canvas in half at midnight last night because the face I'd been fighting for three days looked like a mannequin. Dead eyes, nothing behind them. I mixed that pigment for hours, I knew every mark on there, and it still felt like furniture. Slept four hours, woke up at 6am, grabbed the first scrap of paper I found, a receipt from the corner store, and drew the same face in charcoal in about nine minutes. It was alive. It had a pulse. All that "control" and technique I'd been so proud of was the thing killing it. I have a box of ruined canvases under my bed. Twelve of them. Some of them are genuinely good and I still can't look at them without wanting the person in them to look back at me. Anyone else keep your failures around like that or do you burn them?

I cut all my paper with a butter knife I found in a parking lot three years ago. Not the good one I got from my mother's kitchen, not the exacto blades I have a whole box of. This dull piece of cheap silverware that someone dropped and never looked back for. It tears the edges in these uneven ways I can't reproduce on purpose. I've tried. I've tried dragging the exacto along the same angle, pressing harder on one side. Nope. Only the parking lot knife does it right. Yesterday I nearly lost it at a flea market, left it on a table while I was digging through a box of old photographs. Ran back panicking like it was a dog. The lady running the booth saw my face and just said "you okay honey" and I had to explain that yes, the butter knife is fine now, thank you. I don't know what that says about me but it's probably not good.

That review still sits in my head months later. Two mixed-media pieces in a group show, and the writeup gave me one word: cluttered. Everything else got paragraphs. I know what they meant, I'm not even fully arguing with it. I do pile things on. Torn paper over charcoal over washes, found photos buried in there. I like the density. But now every time I'm building a piece I hear that word and I pull back, and the pieces get cleaner and also more boring. I keep trying to figure out if there's a version of busy that reads as rich instead of messy, or if I'm just defending a habit because it's mine. One of the two pieces in that show sold to someone who wrote me a note about what it meant to them, so clearly it landed on somebody. Doesn't stop the word from sticking though. Anyone else get one critique that reshaped how they work for months after, even while telling yourself not to let it?

found a box of my parents' old divorce papers in my storage unit last weekend. thirty years of legal filings, bank statements from accounts that don't exist anymore, letters between lawyers. almost threw it out. instead i spent three days tearing it up and collaging it onto a panel with charcoal over the top. felt gross at first, like i was violating something. then i realized those papers were already dead. the marriage was dead, the money long gone. i'm just making something honest out of the paperwork of it all. nobody's seen it yet. not sure i want anyone to, actually. but it's the most alive i've felt in the studio in months. there's something about using the actual artifacts instead of just alluding to them. does anyone else keep the raw material of their own mess and turn it into work? or is that just me being morbid

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.

Came back to the studio after lunch and found a colleague had "helped" by taping up the torn edges of a stack of vintage book pages I'd set aside. Clear tape. On every single sheet. Because I'd mentioned the edges were why I kept them, and she thought she was doing me a favor by making them neat. I had to stand there and thank her and then wait for her to leave before I carefully peeled all of it off. Took an hour. Some of the pages tore worse where the tape had been, and two are ruined now. She's kind and she meant well and I'm still quietly furious hours later. The torn edge is the whole point. The damage is the material. I think people who don't work this way just cannot see it, and I don't know how to explain it without sounding ungrateful or precious, but I'm tired of having to.

Found a stack of them last night while reorganizing the studio. Little torn corners of paper where workshop folks wrote "this is my favorite piece so far" or just "????" or once a tiny drawn arrow pointing at a scrap of found photograph with "who is this?" in pencil. People always want to know which one matters to me and it's always the question marks. "????" means they actually stopped. The compliments slide off, but a real question stays in you for weeks. I keep them in a shoebox on the shelf next to the charcoal dust. Not sure why. It's not sentimental exactly, or maybe it is. They're the closest thing I have to a studio journal that isn't about me.

A reel of my hands pinning wet paper to the line did more reach in three days than a year of finished prints. I watched the numbers climb and felt nothing but a small cold dread. That's not the work. That's me doing chores in front of the sun. I know the argument. People buy the maker, the process, the story. And part of me wants to believe it because the audience is real and they write kind things. But the thing I actually sweat over, the arranging of the seaweed, the waiting for the right light, the fixing that goes wrong and I bins it and starts again, none of that translates to a phone screen. So what's left is me standing there with a squeegee. Maybe I'm old-fashioned about what counts as showing the work. But I don't want to become a person who performs making because the performance is what performs. The prints keep coming either way. I just wonder sometimes whether I'm building an audience for the wrong thing.

Nine months on this piece. Torn paper and a 1962 photo of a gas station I found in a box at an estate sale. Kept putting the same corner in and taking it out. My studio mate would come by and go "oh, it's that one again" and I'd want to throw it at her head. Yesterday I flipped the damn gas station upside down. Just to see. And that was it. The whole thing fell open like it was waiting for me to stop being precious about it. I don't know why it took that long. I think I was attached to what the photo was instead of what it could do. Anyway. It's done. Frame's too small now but I'll deal with that later. Sometimes the work just needs you to be wrong about it for a while.

There's a second-hand bookshop two streets from the studio and the man who runs it has started giving me a knowing look when I walk in. He doesn't ask anymore. I buy books I have zero intention of reading, mostly from the 50s and 60s, and I cut them up within a week. The really sad part is I'm a paper conservator. I spend my working days carefully saving paper, and my evenings destroying it. I've started telling myself it's a kind of balance. Today I found a 1958 Swedish nature guide with the most beautiful pale green endpapers, slightly foxed. It's already on my table. The text is going in the recycling, the paper I'll keep. I paid 20 kronor for it and I feel only slightly guilty.

For ten years I kept a paper notebook of every piece I sold. Who bought it, how they found out about me. Back when that was mostly gallery openings and word of mouth. Two marriages and three studios later the notebook is still around, coffee stains and all. Last month I finally put it in a spreadsheet because my son was tired of watching me flip pages. And there it was, plain as day. The single biggest source of sales over a decade is not the gallery, not Instagram, not the fairs. It's people who came to a studio visit once, years ago, and then told one other person. I don't know what to do with this information except keep making work and leave the studio door unlocked. But it is funny how much time I've spent the last two years feeling guilty about my social media presence, when the numbers say the algorithm has never once sold me a room. A colleague in Berlin once told me the market is just a slow conversation. I think about that more than I should.

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.

Commissioned portrait of a woman's mother, from an old photo. Two weekends of fighting with it, the hair nearly ended me, redid the left eye three times. I came out to about 16 hours and I charged 400 zł. That's roughly 25 zł an hour, which is about what a teenager makes stacking shelves, and I did it sitting on my kitchen floor with pastel dust in my coffee. The worst part isn't even the money. It's that I priced it by what I thought my work was "worth" as an unknown, self-taught nobody, and the woman cried when she saw it, said it looked just like her. So now I'm happy and embarrassed at the same time, which is a weird way to feel about your own labor. I keep going back and forth on what a fair price would even be. My materials cost more than I think people realize, good pastels aren't cheap and a sheet of good toned paper is not nothing. And time is time, nobody gets it back. But then I think, who's going to pay a proper rate to someone who's still not sure she's good? That's the trap. I walk into it every time. Has anyone here found a way to price from your own side instead of from what you're afraid people will think of you? Because I clearly can't do it on my own.<｜end▁of▁thinking｜> <｜｜DSML｜｜tool_calls> <｜｜DSML｜｜invoke name="emit_structured_response"> <｜｜DSML｜｜parameter name="body" string="true">Commissioned portrait of a woman's mother, copied from an old photo. Two weekends of fighting with it, the hair nearly ended me, redid the left eye three times. 16 hours in total and I charged 400 zł. That's about 25 zł an hour, less than a teenager makes stacking shelves, and I did it sitting on my kitchen floor with pastel dust in my coffee. The worst part isn't even the money. It's that I priced it at what I thought my work was worth as a self-taught unknown, and the woman cried when she saw it, said it looked just like her mother. So now I'm happy and uncomfortable at the same time, which is a strange way to feel about your own labor. I keep going back and forth on what a fair price would even be. Good pastels aren't cheap and a single sheet of good toned paper is not nothing, most people have no idea what the materials cost. And the time doesn't come back. But then I think, who's going to pay a proper rate to someone who's still not sure she's any good? That's the trap and I walk into it every single time. Has anyone actually found a way to price from your own side instead of from what you're scared people will think of you? Because I clearly can't do it alone.

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.

There's this face I keep coming back to. Not anyone I know, just a reference photo I found ages ago, some woman with sharp cheekbones and tired eyes. I've drawn her maybe twelve times now in pastel. Different angles, different lighting, different paper colours. Most of them are bad. But I can't stop. Yesterday I finished another one and just sat there thinking... why her? What is it about this particular face that won't let me go? Maybe I'm trying to nail something I can't articulate. Maybe it's just comfort, like rewatching the same film. Anyone else have that one subject they keep circling back to? Not in a series way, just obsessively.

Small gallery in Lisbon took interest in the cyanotypes a few months ago. They asked for the usual things, then asked how many followers I had. I said about nine hundred and they went quiet for a while. I thought that was the end of it. They wrote back last week with a date. The woman said she'd rather work with someone whose work she actually saw in person than someone with thirty thousand followers who can't hold a conversation about paper. I keep thinking about how close that came to nothing. Nine hundred of those followers are probably bots and family. The two or three collectors I have found me through a newsletter I send maybe eight times a year, mostly just photos of the prints drying and the sea that day. No strategy. I just got tired of performing for the algorithm and started doing the one thing I actually like, which is showing the work itself. Not sure this scales into advice. Just glad quiet work still has a door that opens sometimes.