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I'll start: early on, a gallery owner loved my work, wanted a show, then told me there'd be no commission split because the "exposure" was payment enough. I was young enough to almost say yes. What's the worst offer you actually got from a gallery? The one that made you laugh or just made you walk.

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?

I've shown with the same gallery in Berlin for twelve years. When we started, I signed their standard agreement without really reading the resale and secondary-market clauses. Stupid, I know. You think you're being gracious, above the business, and you're really just being careless with your own livelihood. Last spring a collector who bought two big canvases from me in 2016 sold one at auction for nearly four times what he paid. Fine, that's his right, that's the market, whatever. But then I learned my contract gives the gallery a cut of that resale, a percentage that runs indefinitely. Not to me. To them. For a painting I made and they sold once, a decade ago. I did the math on it. That one resale paid them more than my last three new commissions combined. And I sat there feeling petty for even noticing, because they were good to me when I was nobody. But nobody works for free, and I have a family. I raised it with them, gently, at our last meeting. The director went a little quiet and then said we could "look at restructuring" for new works. New works. The two paintings already out there, nothing to be done. I don't know what I'm asking here. Maybe just that someone who's been at this longer than me tell me whether this is normal, whether I'm the fool for not having read the fine print at 34, or whether everybody learns this exact lesson the same way and at the same cost.

Had a gallery reach out awhile back, wanted to show my quilts, big talk about how honored I'd be. Then the contract came and it was all "exposure" and them taking 60% and me covering shipping both ways. I told 'em my grandmother didn't teach me to sew so I could work for free. These days I ask straight out what the split is before I even look at slides. Saves everybody time. What's the worst offer a gallery ever thought was generous? I'll wait.

I finally did it. After two years selling 8x10 prints at the local fairs for $45, I bumped them to $60 a couple weeks ago. I'd been telling myself the whole time that $45 was fine "because it's just a hobby," but then I actually did the math on one of them. Framing costs me $14, the print itself $8, and I spent close to six hours on the painting. That was $3.75 an hour. For a mom who paints in the cracks of her day, that's basically working for free. So I raised it. And three of my regulars who've bought from me at every single fair just walked right past my booth without stopping. Didn't even say hi. I get it, $60 is a jump and everyone's feeling it lately, but it stings more than I expected. Part of me wants to put a sign up saying "here's the breakdown, here's what I actually make on this" just so they see I'm not being greedy. The three new people who bought at $60 didn't blink. So maybe the regulars were never going to keep coming anyway, and I just didn't notice because the price was so low it was easy for them. Anyway. Holding at $60. It's still less than minimum wage when you count the hours. But it's honest now, and that's something.

Okay I need to know if this is just me or if this is normal because I'm still kind of reeling from it haha. So I reached out to this gallery back in like... April? Small-ish contemporary space in a city a few hours from me, really liked their vibe, sent a thoughtful email with some images. Heard nothing. Cool, whatever, I figured it was a no and moved on. Then in August I get this email from them like "hey! we'd love to see more of your work, are you free to chat next week?" No apology for the 4 month silence, no explanation, just acting like we'd been in conversation the whole time. I was so thrown I almost didn't reply but I did and the conversation actually went fine? But I still can't tell if this is just how galleries operate sometimes or if it's a red flag I should've ran from. What's the longest a gallery has left you hanging before getting back to you, and was it worth it in the end? Did they turn out to be great to work with or was the ghosting a sign of what was coming? I need stories so I know whether to feel good about this or not lol.

A gallery in Leipzig asked me for a small edition of risograph prints for their holiday market, 50 copies, two colors, A3. I said €250 because I thought riso was cheap to produce and I'd breeze through it. I forgot to account for the test prints, the misregistration on the first 15, the fact that I had to reorder one of the inks mid-run, and the two full days I spent separating the layers because the files the gallery sent were trash. Total cost of materials plus my time: somewhere around €17 an hour. For printmaking. That's less than I paid for the paper. I keep doing this thing where I price the work as if the thinking part is free. As if the years of knowing how to troubleshoot a bad registration or choose paper that won't ghost count for nothing. I just factor materials and a small gesture toward labour and call it done. I'm raising the next edition to €600 and I already feel like I'm being greedy. Which is insane, because €600 for 50 prints, two-color, A3, with original art, that's €12 a print. That's nothing. But the feeling is there anyway.

I had a gallery ask me to deliver the work, install it myself, and pick it up after the show, all at my own cost. No mention of covering transport, no help with hanging. Just "you bring it, you hang it, you take it back." I said no and walked. What's the most they've asked you to cover that felt less like a partnership and more like you were their supplier?

Met a man at the community center show yesterday. He stood in front of my piece for a good long while, this one I'd been working on for weeks, pieced from my grandmother's old housedresses and my aunt's aprons, all those soft faded florals. He looked at it. Nodded. Said how much for this one. I told him. He about choked. Said "that much? My grandmother made quilts for free her whole life. Just gave 'em away." I said well sir, your grandmother probably did it in a time when nobody thought her work was worth money. And she was wronged by that same thinking. But I am not my grandmother in that way. He walked off. And I stood there thinking, that man thought he was telling me something about value. All he told me was that his grandmother never got paid for her gift. And somehow that's supposed to make me lower my price instead of raise it. My grandmother never sold a quilt in her life. She gave them to every child, every cousin, every newborn in the church. And they'd say thank you and put it on the bed and wear it thin. And she died never knowing what her hands were worth. So no sir. I'm not doing it for free. I'm doing it for both of us.

A decorator from Atlanta came through here a few months back, bought a big improvisational piece I'd done, maybe 72 by 90, all in these warm ochres and deep blues, took me the better part of a month on and off between everything else. I charged her $1,200. Felt fair at the time. She didn't haggle, wrote the check, had me ship it. My granddaughter showed me the decorator's website last week. That same quilt's listed at $7,200 in a client's home. "Custom artisan textile" or some such. Now I'm not mad about the free market, I understand how that world works. But I look at what I charged her and I think about my grandmother who would've gotten maybe fifty dollars for a quilt she put her whole self into, if anybody bought it at all. And I think about how I'm still pricing myself like I'm selling at the church bazaar. Somebody out there thinks this work is worth seven thousand dollars. Maybe I ought to start believing them.

A friend from the parents at my daughter's school. She knows I paint. She asked me to do a portrait of her daughter, a nice photo reference she had, the girl in a garden, good light actually. I said yes, I'd be happy to, and told her my price for a bust-length oil on linen, 40 x 50 cm, which is 1 200 €. She paused and said: "But you'll enjoy doing it." Not in a nasty way. She genuinely thought that because I would like the work, it shouldn't cost as much. As if pleasure and payment are opposites. As if a baker shouldn't charge for bread because he likes to bake. I explained that enjoying my work doesn't mean my time and materials are free, and that the years I spent learning to paint a child's face well enough that she'd want to hang it are part of what she's paying for. She said she'd think about it. She hasn't replied. I don't blame her exactly. Nobody taught her what this costs. But I'm tired of explaining that my enjoyment of the work doesn't subtract from the price, it's the whole reason the work is any good in the first place.

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.

I turned off my Instagram and the other one for all of January. Just to see. Had 2,400 followers, which I'd been half-maintaining for years out of some sense that I had to. Nobody noticed. Not one message. My Etsy orders didn't change. The gallery that carries my work emailed about something else entirely. Two things came out of it. One, I'm not going back to posting three times a week for an audience that wasn't there. Two, it cost me nothing, and that's both freeing and a bit humbling. The people who actually buy my work found me through the gallery, through word of mouth, through a craft fair in November. Not through my hashtags. I'm not saying online doesn't work. It clearly does for plenty of people. But I'd built my whole week around a platform that didn't care whether I was on it or not. That's a strange thing to have done for a decade.

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.

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.

Okay, I have to know, what's the strangest thing that happened to you during a gallery visit or meeting? Not the worst, necessarily, just... strange. I once had a gallery owner spend a full fifteen minutes telling me about her golden retriever's dietary restrictions before we even looked at the wall space. I thought maybe she was testing my patience or something. Turns out she just really wanted to talk about her dog. I still don't know if I got the meeting because she liked my work or because I nodded along about grain-free kibble. Your turn. Give me something that made you go "...okay then" in a gallery setting.

I took on a private student a few years back, right after the worst of the crisis here. She was young, maybe 24, no money at all but she wanted to learn mosaic so badly. She showed up at my studio with a five-liter tin of her family's olive oil and asked if we could trade. I said yes because I remembered what it was like to be young and broke and hungry for a skill. She came once a week for six months. She was terrible with the hammer and hardie at first, kept shattering the glass instead of cutting it. But she learned. She ended up getting a commission for a hotel lobby last year. When she sent me photos I actually teared up a little. Meanwhile I get DMs every week from people who want to "collaborate", meaning they want my work for exposure, or they want me to teach them for free because "it would be good for my brand." I don't answer those anymore. The olive oil was good, by the way. Her family makes it near Kalamata. I used it for six months and every time I cooked with it I thought, this is what paying attention to someone actually looks like.

Fella from an agency emailed me. Wanted to shoot a short video of me roughing out a limestone block, said it would help me "reach the collector demographic." Three thousand dollars, he'd bring the crew, I wouldn't have to do anything but work. I told him no. He seemed confused, like I'd turned down free money. Here's the thing. Chasing a chisel around a block for two days is not content. It's loud, it's slow, and half of it is me standing there deciding where the next cut goes. That's the part that matters and it's the part nobody wants to watch. What he wanted was the eighty seconds where the dust flies and the shape shows up. Which is real. It's just not the work. My daughter says I'm leaving money on the table. Maybe. But I've watched what happens to guys who start performing the making instead of doing it. They get quick, they get cute, they start reaching for the angle instead of the stone. I've been at this thirty-odd years and I'm not going to start taking direction from somebody who's never held a mallet. Anyway the block is still there. Half roughed. I'll finish it when it tells me what it wants.

Long story short, someone messaged about a piece, wanted to see it in their space, asked if I could hold it for two weeks while they "decided." I said sure. Then I did the math on what that actually costs me, three weeks of a piece sitting in my front room while I answer follow-ups about whether it's "warm or cool in person." So now I say: $40 to reserve it for a week, comes off the price if you buy. Half of people vanish. The other half pay the $40 instantly and two of those bought. Which is roughly double my close rate from when holding was free. The part nobody tells you is the $40 isn't about the money, it's that it forces them to say yes or no. Free holding lets people stay in maybe forever. Maybe is where all my work goes to die. I had 6 pieces in maybe last spring, I sold 1. Also I finally started saying "I can't hold it, someone else is looking at it this weekend" even when nobody was. Felt like a lie the first three times. It stopped feeling like one when it turned out to be true twice. I'm not saying do this. I'm saying I was giving away the one thing I have that's actually scarce, which is time on a piece before the decision.

I've been selling small edition screenprints through Instagram and my site for about a year now. Nothing huge, maybe 15-20 pieces a month. A few weeks ago I started slipping in a free risograph print with each order, just something I'd already made, an extra, no mention of it in the listing. I thought it would be a nice gesture. What I didn't expect is that people started posting the risograph more than the thing they paid for. Like, photographing it on their wall, tagging me, asking if it's for sale separately. The free thing became the thing they wanted. It's making me rethink how I present the work. People love feeling like they discovered something, even if you deliberately put it there. There's something about the "bonus" object that reads as more authentic than the main one, probably because it feels less like a transaction. I don't know, maybe this is just a thing everyone in product already knows. But coming from a fine art background where you never give anything away because it devalues the work, it's messing with my head a little.