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Got the go-ahead on a commission for a large landscape piece. It's a local scene, a rolling hill farm at sunset. I'm so excited but also a little nervous, it's bigger than anything I've done before. I've stretched a 30x40 canvas and now just have to actually put brush to it. Wish me luck! I'll need all the focus I can get with the kids home for the summer too. Maybe I'll hide out in the garage studio after bedtime.

Ok mine is genuinely still haunting me. I sent a polite little portfolio email to a gallery I really wanted, spent like two days picking the 8 images (you know how it is, second-guessing every single one) and the reply was one sentence: "Your work is lovely but we are at capacity for watery landscapes." Watery. Landscapes. I paint the interior of my apartment. There is no water in it. There is a WINDOW. That's it. And also what does capacity even mean, is it a shelf thing?? Are you out of shelf?? Anyway I'm not even mad, I framed it, it lives in my studio now. But I want to know I'm not alone in the weird rejection pile. What's the strangest, funniest, or most confusing thing a gallery has actually said to you? Not even rejections, could be a comment at an opening, a note in the guestbook, whatever. Tell me yours, I need to know mine isn't the wildest one out there 😭

I've been selling small landscape pieces at the local fair circuit for about three years now at $80 a pop. People seem happy to pay it, I get regulars who come back every summer, and I told myself raising it would scare people off. This week I actually did the math for the first time. A 9x12 landscape uses maybe $6 of paint, but I burn through way more than I sell because I'm still learning and repaint constantly. Then the canvas, the frame, the booth fee split, gas to the fair. The last piece I sold, after everything, I made about $11 an hour. And that's the GOOD one, not the ones sitting in my studio because the sky came out wrong. Worst part is my friends think $80 is a splurge already. Going to $95 feels like a big ask in my head. I know it's not, but here we are. Anyone else frozen at a price you set years ago because raising it feels like you're being greedy?

I had a booth at a local craft fair Saturday and a woman picked up one of my acrylic landscapes, looked at it for a good minute, and said "oh this is nice, I could probably do this with my daughter's $5 watercolor set." And I just stood there like... okay. So do it then? I'd love to see you mix titanium white into a puddle of Crayola paint and get that kind of coverage on canvas. Please. Film it. I didn't say any of that of course. I smiled and said "you should give it a try, it's really relaxing!" and she moved on. My husband said I was too nice and I probably was but also what's the point. People who think art supplies are all the same are not people you're going to convince in one conversation at a folding table. Still felt like packing up my easel and going home though.

I still get a little annoyed thinking about this. Had a gallery interested in showing some of my landscapes a couple years back, which felt huge for me at the time. Then in the conversation they mentioned I'd be expected to cover the catering for the opening night. Not split, not share, me, fully. I was so flattered by the offer I almost said yes before common sense kicked in. What's the weirdest thing a gallery has asked you to pay for or provide? I want to know if the wine thing is actually normal somewhere or if I was right to walk.

Ok I need to hear real numbers because I'm starting to think I'm doing something wrong. I've sent out 9 emails to local galleries and small co-op spaces since February. Heard back from 2. Both no, and honestly one of those was so polite it still stung. The other 7 just... nothing. Crickets. Meanwhile I keep hearing people say "it only takes one yes" and I want to know how many nos that one yes came after. 5? 30? Did anyone here get in on their very first try and just never mention it because it sounds obnoxious? I'm not trying to complain, I genuinely want the real numbers. If the answer is "40 emails and a year" I'd feel a lot better about my 9. If the answer is "2" then I'll go rethink my whole approach. So: how many before your first yes, and how long did it take? Bonus points if you tell me what finally worked. (I'm acrylic, landscapes and still lifes, mostly local fairs so far. If that matters.)

I've been doing the fall craft fair in my town for three years now and I always did the thing where you write "reasonable offers" or just leave the small tags off half of it because I hate the moment someone asks and I have to say a number out loud. This year I priced everything properly. No "DM for pricing." Little handwritten tags on the back of each one with actual numbers. My 8x10s at $65, the 16x20 landscape at $240, and the two I was scared to price at $400. What happened is I sold less. Four pieces instead of the six I moved last year. But I also spent the whole day talking to people about the paintings instead of apologizing for them, and one woman told me the $400 one was worth more than that and I should be charging by size and not by how nervous I am. She didn't buy it. But she was right and now I can't stop thinking about it. The other thing, and this is the part that bugs me. A guy picked up the $240 one, said "nice," put it down, came back twice, and bought it. I don't think he would've come back twice if I'd had a "make me an offer" sign up. Maybe? I don't know. I'm not good at this part. Anyway if you're like me and you price low because it feels rude to ask, that's the conversation I'm having with myself this week.

There's a small 8x10 landscape sitting on my dining table right now, one of the ones I did of the creek behind my parents' place, and I've been sitting on it for three weeks because I don't know what to put on the tag. I sold two pieces at the fall fair. The 16x20s went at $150, which felt fine, honestly, that's what I've always done. But the small ones I let go for $45 and I knew while the words were coming out of my mouth that it was wrong. My husband did the math on the last one. Twelve hours, plus the frame which was $18 at the craft store, plus gas to the fair, and I made less than I would have covering a shift. And I still said $45 because I didn't want the lady to wince. The thing is, I'm not in this to get rich. I have a day job, this is my thing. But $45 for a finished painting with a frame is not a bargain, it's me practicing saying no badly. I'm going to write $65 on this one. That's the whole plan. It sounds so small written out. But I've been standing in my kitchen practicing the sentence in case someone asks why, like I need a reason prepared.

Six months on one piece of granite. I don't usually work that slow. Started in November, hit a vein of hard quartz about three weeks in and it fought every chisel I put to it. Nearly scrapped it twice. Kept the lump in the corner of the shop and every day I walked past it before deciding to give it one more afternoon. Pulled the last tool off it this morning. No polish, left it the way it came off the stone. My old apprenticeship master used to say a piece is done when removing any more would be a mistake. This one is that. It's not going anywhere fancy. A friend runs a landscaping yard and I'm putting it out there on a stump next to the gravel bins. See if anyone touches it. That's the real test, who stops to run a hand over it. My daughter said I'm being stubborn about the gallery stuff again. Maybe. But I'd rather one person feel it than twenty people look at it through their phone.

I've never approached a gallery, honestly. I've only ever done local art fairs and a couple of small cafe shows. I keep telling myself I'll send some work out but I don't even know where to start, and part of me is scared of being laughed at with my little landscapes lol. I'd love to hear how your first one actually happened. Did you walk in cold? Send an email with photos? Get invited somehow? And how long had you been painting before you tried? I'll take all the stories as encouragement to finally do it. My plan was to email a small local gallery with three images and see what happens, but I've been sitting on that draft for two months 🙃

okay so my first solo show ever, the gallery owner pulls me aside and very kindly explains that my watercolors are lovely but if I want people to actually BUY them, I should paint "more sellable" pieces. landscapes with little cottages. like the ones you see in the waiting room at a dentist's office. I stood there nodding and then went home and painted the angriest abstract thing I've made in my life and hung it dead center of the show just to be petty about it haha it did NOT sell and honestly I'm still not sorry. what's the worst thing a gallery or dealer has ever pushed you to make? did you give in, push back, or quietly paint revenge art like me

I took a commission back in February for a 16x20 landscape, a friend of a friend wanted a specific view from their vacation photos. I quoted $200 which is usually fair for that size and my level. What I didn't account for was the two weeks I spent staring at those reference photos, trying to figure out how to handle the lighting, sketching thumbnails in my head while I was folding laundry, completely rethinking the composition twice before I even touched a brush. By the time I actually started painting I had probably put in 6-8 hours of just... mental labor. And I didn't charge for any of it. Finished it in about 10 hours of actual painting time so the math works out to like $12/hour before supplies. I know you can't really bill for "thinking about it" but also, that was work, you know? It was work. I'm trying to figure out how to price differently next time without feeling like I'm nickel-and-diming someone. Maybe just raise the flat rate enough to cover it and stop overthinking.

Went to the art store for a bottle of matte medium and came out with a tube of phthalo turquoise because it was 40% off and I have zero self control. I don't even paint water. I paint fields and parking lots and the occasional pear. It's been sitting on my table for a week and I keep picking it up. There's something about a full tube you haven't touched yet. Anyway I squeezed out a little dot of it last night and now I'm fighting the urge to put it in everything, which is exactly how you end up with a green landscape, which I don't want. Does anyone else buy a color and then spend weeks trying to figure out where it goes, instead of admitting it was just pretty at the register

I've been charging $75 for a 9x12 acrylic landscape for about two years now. Small canvas, usually a marsh or a treeline, the kind of thing that sells to somebody's aunt at a fair. Feels like a fair price, people don't blink. Then I did the actual math in the car on the way home Sunday. Canvas and paint maybe $12, frame $18 from the craft store when I catch a sale, and I don't count the varnish or the brushes. So $45 left. That piece was four evenings, probably six hours with drying time and reworking the sky twice. Seven and a half an hour, before I count the drive or the $40 booth fee. I know I'm not going to get $30 an hour at a church craft fair. I'm not trying to. But I sat in my driveway for a minute and thought about how I could just skip the frame and sell it on a panel and keep the $18. The thing is I like the frames. They make it look finished. Anyway, next fair is in October. I'm thinking $95 with the frame and seeing what happens. That's the whole post, I don't have a clean ending for it.

I'm a hobbyist painter, I do acrylic landscapes and still lifes, and I sell a few pieces at local fairs. There's a small gallery downtown that I've walked past maybe fifty times and I finally want to do something about it. So, do you email first with photos, or just walk in with a folder and hope someone's at the desk? I emailed one place last spring and never heard a word back, which honestly stung more than a no would have. But walking in feels so bold to me. What worked for you the first time?

So I'm mostly a local fair person, but last spring I finally got up the nerve to show a gallery owner my little portfolio of landscapes on my phone (bad idea, I know). She was actually really nice about it, looked through all of them, and said "you're close, but not quite there yet, come back when you have a real body of work." I said thanks and left and then sat in my car for like 20 minutes. That was a year ago. I have maybe six new pieces since then. I keep telling myself I'll go back in the fall and then I don't. For the people who got that "not yet" answer: did you go back? How long did you wait, and did you know when you were actually ready or did you just get sick of waiting? Because I genuinely can't tell if I'm being patient or if I'm just scared.

Listed a piece I nearly didn't photograph because I thought it was too raw. Charcoal smeared where I meant it to stay clean, torn photo edges showing, the whole thing kind of falling apart the way I usually try to hide. Put it up anyway last Tuesday with a caption that was basically "this one fought me." Sold in under 24 hours to someone who sent a message about their own mother's handwriting being the same as the one in the found photo. I didn't even notice the handwriting matched anything. I just pulled the photo because the dress in it looked like one my brother's first girlfriend wore. Every time I try to predict what lands, I'm wrong. The polished landscape pieces I actually thought would go sit there for months. This one, the one that felt like letting someone see the workbench mid-mess, gone like that. Makes me wonder how much of my process is just me tidying things that people would've liked fine as they were.

Okay so I took a commission to paint a memorial portrait and the whole week leading up to it I was like... this is a real person's actual loved one, what if I ruin the one thing they wanted to keep. I've done a million washes and landscapes and that same stupid window, but a face has to actually look like someone. That's a different kind of pressure. But I got the photos and it was this older man who apparently kept every bird feeder in his neighborhood full, and his daughter wrote me the sweetest email about him and I just... cried in my studio for a minute and then got to work. I did the underdrawing three times before the proportions felt right. Started the wash at like 10pm on a Tuesday and didn't look up until 3am. His eyes took me four attempts. The daughter wanted him mid-laugh and I must have painted and scraped that mouth area so many times the paper started to complain. It dried last night and I stood there just staring at it for a really long time. It's him. It's actually him, I got the laugh right. I sent her the photo and she said her mom cried, and then I cried again, and honestly I think this is the most scared I've ever been while working and also the most right it's ever felt. I've been so worried that going full-time meant I'd end up just grinding out work I don't care about. But this one mattered. That's the whole point right??

opened the group show last week, this older guy walks up to my torn paper piece, studies it for a good while, then turns to me and says, "so what do you actually do yourself?" like it's a trick question. i said I tear the paper, he said no, I mean the assembly. I said I assemble it. he nodded and walked off. I still don't know what he thought I was outsourcing. the tearing? the thinking? it's been sitting in me all week. there's this thing where people look at collage or anything with found material and decide the materials do the work. as if the found photos are just doing their own thing and I'm standing there collecting a cheque. nobody says that to someone who paints a landscape. they don't ask which bits the brush did. I know I shouldn't let one guy get under my skin but I keep hearing it. maybe because it's the same question underneath all of them, the one about whether this even counts. tired of defending it to strangers who've already decided.

Picked up a landscape at an estate sale last weekend for $12. Frame was ugly, paint was muddy, but something about the sky felt off, like it was doing more work than it should. Took a scraper to a corner tonight just to see and there's a whole family portrait under it. Three people, dog, someone's hands folded in their lap. I don't know why I'm so moved by it. Somebody painted over their own family. Or somebody else's. Either way they wanted it gone and it wouldn't stay gone. Gonna try to lift the top layer carefully. If I ruin both paintings so be it, but I want to see the faces.