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There's a Saturday market in Galway I've been doing on and off for maybe twelve years. Rain, hail, the odd glorious day where everyone's in great form. And I used to think the point of it was to shift prints, which it is, but the real thing it taught me is how to talk to people about what you make without sounding like you're selling. You get all sorts at a stall. The tourist who wants something that says Ireland without being a leprechaun on a toilet. The local who stops because they recognise the pier or the mountain. The person who clearly loves the work but hasn't got thirty quid and stands there turning a card over in their hands. And you learn, quick, that the ones who buy aren't the ones you try to convince. They're the ones you just talk to, normally, about the carving or the ink or the hare that lives in the field behind your house and won't let you get near it. The thing that stuck with me is this: I've never sold a print by telling someone how good it is. I've sold plenty by telling them the story of the night I carved it and nearly took the tip of my finger off, or how the block got dropped in a puddle and the crack became part of the print. People want the thing behind the thing. They don't want a pitch. Anyway. The market's grand for that. But online, I still catch myself trying to sound like a proper business instead of just a fella in a jumper with ink under his nails. And the minute I do that, engagement drops off a cliff. The posts that work are always the ones where I forget I'm supposed to be marketing and just talk about what happened today. Sure I don't know where I'm going with this except that the best marketing advice I ever got was from a woman buying a print of a heron who said "just tell me why you made it" and walked away with two.

So I did a little market in this old garage space in El Cabanyal last weekend. Thought it'd be quiet, maybe sell a few small pieces, cover the table fee. I brought a box of seconds, things with cracks, glaze drips, a little jug that leaned so far it looked drunk. I almost didn't unpack them. Put them at the edge of the table for 10€ each, basically clay cost. They went first. People loved them more than the "good" pieces. One woman said the crack in a little cup looked like a lightning bolt and she wanted to drink her morning coffee from it. I had to stop myself from explaining it was a kiln failure. Meanwhile on Etsy I'm fighting the algorithm, paying for ads, packing things in bubble wrap like a warehouse robot. And I made more in four hours sitting in a chair drinking terrible coffee from a thermos, telling people yes that cup is supposed to look like that. I'm not saying markets are the answer for everyone. But I'm starting to think the friction of selling online is getting ridiculous for small makers. You spend more time managing the store than making the thing. At the market you just... show up. Talk to people. Hand them a wonky cup and they love it. Maybe the real hack is just lowering your standards and letting people see the ugly ones lol

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.

was set up at the little sunday market in russafa, selling some of my smaller pieces, little jugs, a couple of those face vessels i've been working on, some bowls with this turquoise glaze i finally got right after like six fails. and this guy walks up, picks up one of the face vessels, turns it over in his hands for a while. and he goes "so, this is 3D printed, right? the texture's very uniform." joder. i wanted to hand him a ball of clay and say "here, try making a face with your bare hands, see if it comes out uniform." but i just laughed and said no, it's hand-built, you can see the fingerprints if you look. and he goes "oh, so you designed the file and printed it and then painted it?" i told him the only file involved is the one i'm gonna use to file down my patience after this conversation. he did not buy anything.

So I decided to actually log everything I did to promote my work in February. Not just guess, actually write it down. 27 hours. Twenty-seven hours of scrolling, posting, hashtag research, replying to comments, writing newsletter drafts I never sent, reading articles about algorithms, changing my bio three times. And you know what came from it? Two commission inquiries that both ghosted after I sent pricing. Meanwhile the one thing I actually sold last month came from someone who saw a piece in a café window where I'd left a business card months ago. Zero effort. Zero hours logged. I'm not saying marketing is useless. I'm saying I spent 27 hours doing stuff that felt productive and most of it clearly wasn't. I don't even know what to cut because it all felt important in the moment. Has anyone actually tracked this and changed what they do based on it? Or are we all just spinning plates and hoping?

I've been selling small etchings for €180 since 2021. Same size, same paper, same amount of work. Three years of the same number while my studio rent in Berlin went up twice and the price of copper plates nearly doubled. Last month I finally raised them to €240. Not a huge jump. Still probably too low for the time that goes in. But I did it. Then a former professor, someone whose opinion I actually respect, saw the new price list and said, in that careful tone, that the pricing was "ambitious." Asked if I was worried about "pricing myself out" of the market. The market being what, exactly? The market of people who think art should cost as much as a nice dinner? I didn't say what I wanted to say, which is that I know etchers in London charging £400 for a similar plate and nobody calls that ambitious. I just said I'd think about it. Now I'm sitting here wondering if I should have raised them more, or if I'm actually wrong. The math says €240 is still a bad hourly rate when you add up drawing time, plate prep, printing, editioning. But the voice of that professor is stuck in my head.

Y'all, I been selling quilts my whole life, church bazaars, word of mouth, folks stopping by the house. Never needed much more than that. But my granddaughter got me on Instagram a few years back, and I tell you what, the folks I've met through there... mm. People from England, from Japan, from California, wanting a piece of what I do. I sold a quilt last month to a woman in Paris. Paris, France. She saw a picture I took on my kitchen floor and paid more than I used to ask for a whole summer's worth of craft shows. And I'm grateful, don't get me wrong. The Lord's been good. But there's something funny about it, these folks paying top dollar for what my grandmother did out of a flour sack because that's what she had. They call it "art" now, and I guess it is. But it was art then too, wasn't it? Anyway. I'm still figuring out what to make of it. Grateful, but figuring.

Had a gallery offer representation but wanted me to front the cost of their promotional materials. Anyone else run into this? Seemed off to me.

went to a friend's opening last night and this man I've never met walks up to a piece I have in the show, it's this big mixed-media thing I worked on for months, central image is this dead elm against a gray sky, torn paper and charcoal and some old family photos collaged into the roots, and he goes "love the texture but you're burying the lede, that tree is a downer, crop it to just the bottom third and you've got something people would actually buy" i just stood there holding my wine. didn't say anything useful. just nodded like a malfunctioning toy. and now i'm lying in bed at 7am still replaying it and thinking about all the things i should have said. the tree is the whole point my guy. the tree is doing the work. you want me to make you a nice little abstract of some roots? go buy a print at homegoods.

Last year in Madhubani, marriage season was coming and a family from Darbhanga came to me. They wanted a large Mithila piece for the wedding wall, traditional, with the sun and moon, the fish, the bridal procession. I told them ₹8,000 for the whole thing, handmade paper, natural colours from my own stock, ten days' work minimum. They said they would think about it. Next week I heard they went to a younger fellow in the next lane. He does the work too, learned from his aunt, but he charges ₹4,000. He uses poster colour, not geru and rice paste. And the paper is machine-made. But it is half my price, so they went to him. I am not angry at the boy. He is feeding his family. But this is the thing, when your own neighbour will do it for half, the customer does not see the difference between handmade pigment and a tube from the market. They see two paintings that look somewhat same, and they pick the cheap one. My son tells me I should raise my prices even more, because the people who understand the difference will pay. But the people who understand the difference are fewer every year. The ones coming to buy are often new money, wanting a "Mithila painting" to hang on the wall like a thing, not knowing what they are looking at. So I am stuck. ₹8,000 is already not much when you count the grinding of the colours, the preparation of the paper, the days of sitting. But I cannot compete with ₹4,000 and poster colour. And I don't want to compete that way either. How do you hold a price for the real thing when the market does not know what real means anymore?

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.

Okay so I saw that post about ugly websites converting and it got me thinking because honestly? My own marketing feels like that sometimes. Like, I'm supposed to be this "artist" with a clean brand but my process posts are always so chaotic, sometimes I even accidentally show my dirty mug or a paint smudge on my arm and omg, the engagement on those is SO much higher than the perfectly curated ones. People seem to like seeing the actual work and not just the finished product. It feels super counterintuitive to the whole 'aspirational' vibe that marketing gurus push, but I'm getting more comments and saves on the messy stuff. Anyone else finding that the more you lean into the imperfect, the better things perform? It’s kinda making me want to just dump all my WIPs and sketches everywhere lol.

Ach, I'm still buzzing off this. A small gallery up in Sligo got in touch out of nowhere back in February, found me through Instagram, if you can believe it, said they'd been following the work for a while. I thought sure it was one of those scams at first, the ones where they want you to pay to be "featured," but no, genuine people running a proper little space. Sent them a dozen prints this morning, all matted and packed proper. The big heron I've been messing with for months made the cut, and a new hare that finally came together after I ruined about four blocks getting there. Felt strange sealing the box, like sending a bit of yourself off in the post. But good strange. Never had a gallery come to me before. Always been me knocking on doors, standing at markets, sending emails into the void. Nice to be on the other end of it for once. Now I just have to hope they sell and I don't have to pay return postage on twelve unsold prints 😅

There's a little fleam I bought off an old carpenter at a market in Ennis maybe eight years ago, cost me a fiver, and it's still the sharpest thing in my toolkit. Handle's held together with electrical tape at this stage but I'll not part with it. Every morning I'm in the studio I run it along the edge of a gouge a couple of times and it brings the life back into it. And then I've a brand new burnisher I paid forty-odd quid for sitting in a drawer since I got it because the one I actually use is a smooth bit of bone I found on the beach in Connemara. Kid you not. Dog dug it up, I cleaned it off, and it's the perfect thing. What's the bit of kit you won't let go of because it works and that's all that matters, and what's the expensive thing you own that you barely touch? I'm not talking brushes obviously, we all have the brush we'd cry over losing. I mean the odd bits.

So I've been full-time for eight months now which means I've been doing all the "okay so I guess I have to market myself" stuff that nobody prepares you for in art school lol. And the thing that actually worked, the thing that got me my first real gallery relationship, was the most humiliating process ever. I spent a weekend sending 40 cold emails. Like, proper ones, with images and links and a real bio. And I got one reply. ONE. And honestly for like two days I was so embarrassed I almost didn't open it because I assumed it was a no too. But it was a yes. A small gallery in a city I'd never been to, but they liked my work and wanted to talk. That one yes turned into a group show, which turned into two commission requests from people who saw the show, which turned into enough money to pay rent for three months without panic-ordering takeout. Anyway I'm not saying cold emailing is the secret sauce, mostly it's just brutal lol. But I think sometimes we hear about the one reply and not the 39 silences. So here's my question I guess: what's the thing you tried that felt stupid or embarrassing or like it wasn't working, and then it kind of... did?

I got a call last week from a woman I didn't know. Said she found my name on a label sewed into an old quilt she bought at a church flea market over in Tuscaloosa. Asked if I wanted it back. I knew exactly which one before she even described it. That blue and yellow improv log cabin I made in '93, right after my youngest left for school. I was so lonesome that year I just sewed and sewed. Sold it for $40 at a craft fair at the county annex, first quilt I ever sold to a stranger. I remember watching the woman walk off with it folded over her arm and thinking I might've made a mistake letting it go. Anyway she mailed it to me and I opened the box and there it was. Still sturdy. Still a little crooked in places. I sat and held it in my lap a good long while before I could do anything else. I don't know what I'm gonna do with it now. Might keep it. Might hang it where I can see it. That quilt been out in the world longer than my own children lived in this house. Lord.

still mad about this years later. small gallery, decent space, said they loved my work. then the email came, they wanted me to pay for the opening drinks, pay for the printed invites, "cover my share of the marketing." i was young and almost said yes. what's the wildest thing a gallery has asked you to pay for? the one that made you laugh and hang up? i need to know i'm not the only one who almost fell for it.

alright here's one that's been rattling round my head. I did a group show maybe three years back, decent gallery, nice space, did the whole song and dance. Sold three prints. Got my cut six months later after chasing it twice. Grand, that's the game, I know. but the same summer I did a one-night thing in a mate's pub in Salthill. Hung stuff on the wall with picture wire and blu-tack. Sold five prints off a stack on the bar and took cash in a jar. Made four times what the gallery paid me and had a feed of pints out of it. I'm not knocking galleries, I've had great ones. But I'm wondering, have ye ever done something scrappy and unpolished that outsold the proper exhibition? Like a studio open day, a market stall, a pop-up in someone's living room. What worked? What felt mad but actually paid?

A man I've sold three paintings to over the years, nice enough, serious collection, comes to the studio, emails me last month. He wants two new pieces, both around 80x60cm. He asks if I can "do something" on the price since he's taking two at once. I said no. Politely but directly. I explained that my price is the price because of what goes into it, not because I'm guessing what the market will bear. Buying two doesn't make the painting easier to paint. He wrote back the same day, a bit cool, said he understood. I haven't heard from him since. Maybe I lost a client, maybe he's just busy. What I keep thinking about is how uncomfortable that moment was, the feeling that I was being rude by not playing the game. In France especially, people negotiate on everything. But I don't want my work to be something you bargain over like a carpet in a souk. The price says what the work is. If I bend, I'm saying it wasn't really that price to begin with. Still. The silence makes you wonder.

Got approached by a gallery last year that wanted me to cover the cost of shipping both ways, the opening catering, and a "marketing fee" before they'd hang my work. Told them I'd pass. Never sat right with me. What's the worst "you pay us" pitch you've gotten? I'm trying to figure out where the line is between normal and predatory.