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ah here. was in my local sunday evening after the market, still had ink under my nails, couple of prints in a folder I was dropping to a fella. and this lad I know by sight but not by name leans over and spots them and goes "oh right, linocut, yeah. sure that's just a fancy stamp, isn't it. I could do that." and I just. looked at him. looked at the pint. considered my options. I said "you absolutely could, yeah. you'd want a decent set of tools, some linoleum, a barren, good paper, about three years of learning how not to slice your thumb off, a lot of patience for pulling a proof and realising you carved it all backwards, and the willingness to bin about forty prints before you get one you'd show your mother. but sure. stamp. basically." he laughed, fair play, said he'd stick to the day job. but the head on it. the absolute confidence of a man who's never held a gouge in his life that it's just pressing rubber on a pad. I wanted to hand him a block and a knife and say go on so, prove me wrong. what's the one your thing people insist is dead simple?

so my first proper gallery show, years ago, small local place, lovely folks running it. they asked me to deliver everything framed and ready to hang. i thought that was normal. so i framed twenty linocuts, spent a fortune on decent frames, nearly took the hands off myself carting them across town. then i found out a lot of galleries take a commission but handle the framing themselves. or some split it. or they've got a guy. what's the norm where you are? do you deliver frame-ready or does the gallery sort that? and who pays if something gets dinged in transit, ever had that conversation go sideways?

Was at the market on Saturday, same spot I've had for years, and this fella stops in front of my prints. Looks at the big hare for a good long while. I'm thinking grand, we have a looker. Then he points at it and says, "That hare is anxious, you know. The eye's too big. I could sort that out for you, ten minutes with a pencil." Ten minutes with a pencil. On a linocut I carved over three weeks and pulled fifty of by hand. As if it's a doodle he can just fix. I says, "Ah sure, that's the thing about hares, they're anxious. That's the whole point of them." Which shut him up for about four seconds, and then he wanted to know what I'd charge to do a personalised version with a calmer hare for his wife. I told him I'd knock a tenner off if he promised to stay out of the studio. He laughed. I wasn't joking. Bought the small print in the end, the one with the heron, so all's well. But the head on me walking home. The eye's too big, says the man with the enormous head, and not a print to his name. Anyway. Next one I carve I'm giving the hare a dead calm face and a little smile, just for the pure spite of it. See how he likes that.

First gallery that ever took my work, small place down the country, fella ran it out of a converted shed near the sea. Took six linocuts on consignment, sold two in eight months, paid me eventually. Nothing glamorous. But I was buzzing for weeks after he said yes, d'you know that feeling? Like someone finally saw the thing you'd been doing in a room on your own and said that'll do. What was yours? The first gallery that gave you a shot, how'd it happen, what were the terms, was it as grand as you'd hoped or a bit of a let-down? Love to hear the stories.

So there's a new place opened down near the docks, lovely spot, they wanted a big linocut for the main wall, something of Galway Bay, rough sea, the whole bit. I was delighted with myself. Gave them the friends-and-family rate because they're sound and I wanted the work up somewhere people'd see it. €600, I said. Frame included. Generous, I thought. What I didn't do was keep a proper tally of the hours. Carving that thing, it's a big block, 60x40cm, all that water and sky and the little light breaking through, took me the guts of three weeks on and off. Proofing it, pulling the final edition, stretching the paper, framing it myself. Did the maths this morning. Roughly 40 hours all in. That's €15 an hour, and that's before materials, before the frame cost me sixty quid, before the petrol driving it down there. I'm not even angry about it, I'm just looking at the number and thinking, I'd have been better paid stacking shelves. But I'd also have been bored out of my skull, so there you go. Anyway the print looks savage up on the wall. I'll put the price up next time and see do I survive it.

I've been doing this thing the last year or so where instead of trying to flog prints to strangers who've never heard of me, I just trade with other artists and makers. Potter gets a hare linocut, I get a mug. Woodworker gets a heron, I get a stool. That sort of carry-on. And what I didn't expect, half the commissions I've had this year came because that potter showed the print to someone who walked into her studio, or that woodworker hung it in his workshop and a customer asked where it came from. It's the slowest funnel in the world but it keeps working. I'm not even trying to sell at that point, I'm just swapping because I want the thing they make. The other thing is it got me out of my own head about pricing for a bit. Nothing resets your sense of value like holding something someone else spent ten hours making and thinking Jesus that's worth more than twenty quid. Makes you price your own work better too. Anyone else doing this or am I just building a very eclectic house one swap at a time?

I do the Saturday market in town maybe twice a month, rest of the time it's online. And every time I come back from the market I look at the Instagram numbers and just laugh. At the stall, I can put out ten different prints, hares, herons, the round tower at Kilmacduagh, a new linocut of the Claddagh at low tide, and watch people pick things up and put them down. And what sells is never what I think will sell. Never. The one I carved in two hours on a whim because I was bored? Gone in the first hour. The one I spent three weeks on, re-carved twice, perfect registration? Sits there like a nun at a wedding. Last month a woman bought the scrappy little print of a jackdaw I nearly didn't bring. She said it looked like the ones that raid her bins at home. And I'm sitting there thinking, I can't algorithmically optimise for "reminds you of a bin-raiding jackdaw." The real numbers I trust are: did someone laugh, did someone say "that's himself exactly," did someone pull out a crumpled twenty from their back pocket. The rest of it feels like astrology for people who make things.

Did a linocut for a mate's mother two years back. She wanted a heron for the sitting room, lovely woman, made us dinner while the ink dried. Charged her €80 because sure, she's family-adjacent, and it was only one colour, how long could it take. Twelve hours it took. Twelve. And between the lino, the paper, the good ink, the proofing runs where the bugger wouldn't sit flat... I made about €4.50 an hour and told myself it was the gesture that mattered. Now every second cousin and neighbour's dog is looking for the "€80 heron." Two women this month alone, and one of them was genuinely offended when I said €180 for a bigger one. "But you did Joan's for eighty." Joan knows the price of bread, so she does, and she's mortified, but the cat's out of the bag. Worst part is I can't even be mad at them. I set the damn rate. If you undervalue your own work once, that's the price that follows you around for the next five years. I've had to have the awkward chat three times now and I still hate it every go. Lesson's learned anyway. Friend rate is a bottle of whiskey and a proper thank you, not a discount that pads itself into every conversation after. Sure I'm still not sure how to undo it, but I'm not doing another one at eighty. That ship has sailed.

Guy stands at my market stall today, full twenty minutes, picks up every print, turns it over, studies it like he's appraising at Sotheby's. I'm thinking grand, a looker, let him be. Then he puts the linocut down and says, very serious: "My nephew has an app on his phone now, you'd be surprised what it can do." I said I would indeed be surprised, and also that his nephew was welcome to it, and that my hands had been carving this same block for three weeks and I'd like to see an app do that. He bought nothing, of course. They never buy nothing. But the app's nephew does it, so he's grand anyway. More power to the phone. I don't know why it gets to me, sure it shouldn't. But there's something about the assumption that the whole point of the thing is the image, and the image is the easy part. The carving's the boring bit, the bit that doesn't matter. Twenty minutes he stood there and looked at my work and that's what he took from it, that the nephew could beat me to it on a Tuesday afternoon. Anyway. The nephew's welcome to it. I'll keep the block. 😅

There's a woman at the market every second Sunday who stops at my stall, looks at the hare linocut I've been carving versions of for the guts of a decade now, and asks the same question. Is he native Irish? And I say sure he's from a sketch I did out past Spiddal, he's as native as I am. And she goes, oh, but the grey ones are more authentic, don't you think? The mountain hare. Now, I don't want to be a fella who argues about taxonomy with a customer holding a wallet, and I've learned the hard way that "well actually" is not a sound you want to make at a market. But the head on me. I've been drawing this hare from the same family that's been in the field behind my uncle's place since I was a kid. It's not a species, it's a specific lad. I could point at the field from where I carved it. And she's telling me about authenticity. What I wanted to say was, would you go up to a portrait painter and tell him the sitter wasn't the right shade of Irish? But I just smiled and told her the black ink was imported, in fairness, so maybe the whole thing was a bit of a mongrel anyway. She bought the card in the end, the one with the heron on it. I'm not sure the hare and I have recovered.

Did the Christmas market circuit again this year, first time since before the lockdowns, and I forgot how much you learn from standing behind a table for eight hours. Two years of posting online, chasing the algorithm, reels and carousels and all of it. And then one Saturday in Galway an aul wan picks up a print, holds it at arm's length, squints, and says "that's nice, is it from a photograph?" and I'm explaining linocut to her and she buys it and tells me her mother had a hare in the kitchen. That's the whole job. That exchange. Can't get it from a screen. The thing I'd forgotten is how much the actual conversation sells. People don't buy prints standing in a cold hall, they buy the story you tell them about the block and the carving and the bad weather that put the heron in it. I sold more from the table in one day than a month of good posts. Not because the posts are wrong, but because there's no substitute for a body in front of the work. Still, the online crowd is what finds you the gallery people and the commissions. So it's not either/or. But sure, there's a reason I keep the stall. It's the only place the work gets a real reaction instead of a like.

Alright here's one. Early days for me, maybe ten years ago, I got into a group show in Dublin. Nice enough space, good opening crowd. I sold a decent-sized linocut, one of the ones I was proud of. Gallery took 50%. Which, fine, that's the game. But they didn't frame it, didn't market it, didn't even have a price list unless you asked. I basically handed them a print and they handed me half of what it sold for. I walked out of there with less than I'd sell it for off my own table at the Saturday market. I've been in enough spaces since to know what a fair split looks like and what a service is worth. But that one still sticks in my craw. 50% for a wall and a glass of cheap wine. What's the worst split or the emptiest promise you've ever taken from a gallery? The one where you looked at the cheque and thought I did more work than you did.