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Every winter, around January, I paint the same three things without planning it. My daughter's hand on a tablecloth from when she was small. The corner of our bedroom in the grey morning light. A pear that sits on the same cloth for weeks until it rots and I have to buy another one. I didn't notice the pattern until last year. I thought I was just stalled, repeating myself. But my husband said, why would you stop, these are your prayers. Anyway. I painted the pear again this morning. It's not for anything. No show, no sale. Just the same pear in the same light and I still haven't got it right.

Started a charcoal portrait around midnight. Just a friend's face, nothing dramatic. Three hours later I'm sitting on the floor with tears running down my face because something clicked in the way the light hit her jaw and I don't know if it's actually good or if I was just tired and overwhelmed and the art hit the right bruise. Has anyone else had that? Where your own work makes you emotional and you genuinely cannot tell if it's because you cracked something real or because you're projecting hard onto it? I want to show someone but I'm scared they'll look at it and be like "it's fine" and I'll realize the tears were just me being a mess.

Had a woman in the studio last week. She saw a small collage I made from a 1920s Swedish grammar book page and some torn map fragment, and she spent a solid twenty minutes explaining to me that it was about the fragmentation of national identity in post-industrial Scandinavia. I said it was about liking the yellow of the map against the grey of the paper. She looked at me like I'd said something stupid. Maybe I had. But also maybe that piece is just me being picky about two colours that sit well together and leaving most of the page empty because empty feels right. Not everything is a statement. Some things are just a decision about where to stop cutting.

i've drawn the same face maybe fifteen times in the last month. same tilt of the head, same heavy eyelid, same mouth just slightly open. i didn't plan it. i keep catching myself reaching for the same reference photo i saved months ago and didn't think twice about. i don't even know who she is. some actress maybe? a stock photo? i can't find the original anymore. my partner says it's like i'm trying to get one thing right before i can move on. maybe that's it. maybe i just need to get her exactly right once and then i can let her go. anyone else have a face that follows them around?

Had a meeting a few years ago with a space in Berlin that said they loved my work but wanted to "see more range" before they'd commit to a show. Which translated to: could I make something less repetitive, less conceptual, more decorative. Basically could I be someone else. I said no and we both wasted six months anyway. I still wonder if I should have been more flexible. But also, the whole reason I work in print is repetition. The multiple IS the point. So "show range" felt like showing I didn't believe in my own ideas. What's the worst thing a gallery has asked you to change about your work? And did you do it?

I sold a painting last month through my gallery in Paris. 50x65cm, interior scene, took me about six weeks off and on, not full time, I teach, but probably 90 hours of actual brush time. Gallery sold it for €4,800. I get €2,400. So that's €26.66 an hour before materials, before the stretcher, before the二十年 of learning how to make a shadow feel like air. I'm not complaining about the gallery, they have costs, they have a beautiful space in the Marais, they bring clients I can't reach. But I sat there staring at the number and thought, I could clean houses for more. What gets me is we never talk about this when we talk about prices. We say "I sold a piece for X" and it sounds like a victory. But the number that matters is what lands in your hand divided by the hours you actually worked. And if you're honest about it, it's almost always humiliating. I'm not lowering my prices. I'm not raising them either, not yet. I'm just saying it out loud because I think we all pretend the math is better than it is.

There's this tiny chai shop near Shanti Nagar double road, been there for maybe forty years, tucked between a jewellery showroom and a building that's already been sold for redevelopment. I've been meaning to paint it for months but kept putting it off, too many people, too much traffic, too self-conscious to sit there with my sketchbook. Finally went this morning at 6am. Sat on a plastic stool, ordered chai I didn't even finish, and painted for two hours while the guy who runs the shop kept peering over my shoulder and saying "akka, colour kammi" meaning I wasn't using enough colour. He wasn't wrong. Came home and finished it on the table. And I don't know, I just sat there looking at it and felt something I don't feel often, like it actually came out the way I wanted. The light, the shadows from the awning, the old board with the faded name. Took a photo, sent it to my husband, and he said "that's the one" without me even asking. I never know how to take compliments on my work. But I think I'll frame this one. For myself.

There's this little vessel I made like three months ago. Handbuilt, sort of egg-shaped with a neck that bends too far to the left. I underfired it by accident and the glaze came out this weird milky grey instead of the deep green I wanted. Honestly I hate looking at it. It sits on my shelf and I keep meaning to recycle the clay. But every single person who comes to my stall picks it up. Like, reaches for it before anything else. I sold four others just like it this weekend at the market in El Cabanyal and I don't understand why. One woman said it looked "honest." I don't even know what that means. I'm not complaining exactly, it's paying for more clay. But it messes with my head a little, like maybe what I think is a mistake is actually the thing that works? Or maybe people just like weird egg shapes. I don't know. Anyway if you're reading this and you bought the grey egg thing from me on Sunday, I hope you like it more than I do. genuinely.

My own mother's brother. At lunch yesterday. Looking at a painting I'd just finished of a house on Wheeler Road that's about to be demolished, I was actually pretty happy with how the light came through the portico. And he goes, "All this is nice, but when are you going back to proper architecture? Enough timepass na?" Timepass. I spent seven years in practice before I switched. I know what a structural load calculation looks like. I know what it is to sit through a client meeting where they want to change everything at the 11th month. I haven't forgotten any of it. I just chose something else. And the thing is, he's not even being mean. He genuinely thinks he's looking out for me. That's the part that gets me. The concern. The well-meaning. The absolute certainty that art is what you do until you find something serious. I didn't say much. Just smiled and said maybe next year. But I've been thinking about it all evening and I'm still irritated.

Okay so I've been trying to figure out this whole "get your art in front of people who actually buy it" thing instead of just posting into the void and hoping. I kept reading that you're supposed to DM interior designers and stylists but nobody ever says what you're actually supposed to SAY to them?? Like "hi I'm an artist" feels so flat. So last week I just went for it. I picked 12 designers who post the kind of spaces I could actually see my work in, warm, natural light, not super minimal. And I literally just said something like "hey! I'm a watercolor painter and I've been obsessed with how you use color in [specific project they posted]. Just wanted to share a few pieces I think would sit nicely in that kind of space, no pressure at all but thought I'd throw it out there" and attached 3 photos. 3 replied. One asked to set up a call. One said "send me your portfolio" and then went quiet lol. One just said "beautiful work, I'll keep you in mind" which could mean nothing but also could mean something?? I don't know. The thing is I felt so awkward doing it. Like I'm bothering them. But also nobody saw me do it so who cares right. I'm gonna do another batch this week and actually follow up with the ones who went quiet because my friend who's a freelancer said that's the part everybody skips. Anyway just wondering if anyone else has tried this and whether it actually turned into sales or just polite replies that go nowhere. I'll report back if that call turns into anything 🙃

There's this old bungalow off Cubbon Road, been meaning to sketch it for months, kept putting it off. Yesterday my husband told me they've started demolition. I went this morning anyway and sat across the street and painted it while the JCB was just sitting there idle, like even the machine was waiting for something. The painting's not great. I was rushing, and my hand was shaking a bit, and the proportions are off because I kept looking up at the windows thinking this is the last time anyone's going to draw these. It's finished but I don't know what to do with it. Don't want to post it, don't want to throw it. Just sat here staring at it with my chai going cold. Is this just what it means to document a city? You're basically making funeral portraits and calling it a practice?

I have this cardboard box under the worktable. It's been there maybe twelve years now. Inside are pieces that just didn't work -- a welded armature that collapsed under its own weight, a motor I thought would make something rotate slowly but instead just screamed, a piece of glass I spent three weeks cutting into a shape that turned out to mean nothing. I can't throw them out. Not because I'll use them someday, most of them are useless. But when something new isn't working, I go to the box. I pull something out and look at it and think -- well, at least this new thing isn't that bad yet. It's a floor, not a ceiling. Keeps me from panicking. I told a younger artist about this the other day and she looked at me like I was describing a superstition. Maybe it is. But the box stays.

I took on a commission last year that I was genuinely unsure about. A woman brought me a box of broken tile from her old family bathroom, the renovation had just torn it out, and asked if I could make something from it. Not a mosaic of something, she said. Just... the tile itself, made into something that feels like it means something. I said yes because I liked her face and I needed the work. Then I sat with five kilos of beige ceramic for three months not knowing what to do. Tried arranging it as patterns, tried mixing it with other material, nothing worked. It just looked like broken bathroom tile. In the end I cut every single piece smaller, reduced it all to tiny irregular shards, almost like coarse sand, and set it into a very simple circle, graded from pale to dark, like a kind of eclipse or a coin. No image. Just the material, transformed by being reduced and rebuilt. Took weeks of just cutting and placing, cutting and placing. She picked it up yesterday and cried. Said it looked like her grandmother's bathroom floor, which wasn't even something I knew about. I don't know if I'll ever do that again, but I'm glad I did it once. Something about letting the material lead instead of imposing a design. Hard to describe. But it worked.

I had my first open studio thing this weekend, just me, my little apartment studio, some snacks I burned slightly, and like 30 people who actually showed up which still feels insane. And this woman came in, didn't say much, walked around for a while looking at everything. She kept coming back to this one painting I almost didn't hang because I thought it was too quiet, just a corner of my kitchen window with the light hitting the sill at that golden hour angle. I'd painted it like six times trying to catch it right. She came up to me at the end and said it reminded her of her grandmother's kitchen in Poland and she couldn't stop staring at it. And then she bought it. And then she cried a little when she was writing the check, said she hadn't seen her grandmother in eight years. I didn't know what to do with that honestly. I just stood there holding the cash like a complete idiot. My partner had to nudge me to say thank you properly haha. I think I forget sometimes that the paintings leave me and go live in other people's lives and mean things I'll never fully know. That's kind of terrifying and lovely at the same time. Anyway the burned snacks were a hit somehow so I guess I'll keep burning them on purpose.

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.

I've been working on this canvas for about six weeks now. 190 x 160. Oil and cold wax. And for the first three or four weeks I was still pushing it, you know, making decisions, applying pressure. Then at some point last week, I don't remember exactly when, the thing started pushing back. It started having its own requirements. I'm not talking about the paint itself leading you, that's something else. I mean the painting developing a kind of internal logic that you either follow or you ruin it. I had a patch of cadmium red deep in the lower left quadrant, maybe the size of my hand, and I kept wanting to extend it, pull it further into the composition. But every time I tried, the whole thing went wrong. The painting didn't want it. Two days ago I finally stopped and just left it where it was, isolated, and the whole canvas breathed again. My gallerist would hate me saying this because it sounds like mysticism. But I've been doing this long enough to trust it. The painting knows what it is before I do. My job is mostly to get out of its way in time. Anyone else have this? The moment where you stop being the author and become more of an editor?

I've been with the same gallery since 2009. They sold my work. They took their cut. We didn't talk about it much. It worked. Got an email last week from their new director. Young guy. Said they're shifting focus to artists with "stronger direct engagement." Which means they want me to do their job for them online. I got a 400-pound granite piece in my studio right now that nobody's seen. I'm trying to figure out if I should drag it out and film myself grinding on it, or just keep working and see what happens. Neither option feels right. Anyone else getting this from their gallery lately? The "we love your work but also can you become a content creator" talk?

I spent all last year trying to crack the algorithm. Filming my process with proper lighting. Voiceovers about the "meaning behind the work." Scheduling posts at optimal times. The reel that got me actual sales? Me, 11pm, exhausted, propping a half-finished painting against a wall in bad kitchen light, no audio, just a 5-second clip of me adding charcoal lines. Caption: "this isn't working yet but I like it." That's it. 14k views. Two commissions. I don't know what to do with that information. It makes me want to stop trying at all, which is probably not the takeaway, but also maybe it is?

i was digging through old work last night, stuff from like 2017, 2018, before i had any clue what i was doing technically. and it's so raw. like genuinely uncomfortable to look at. there's this one charcoal portrait i did on newsprint of all things, the paper is practically disintegrating, and the face is just WRONG, proportions all off, but god it has something in it. it's looking at you. it's hurting. and i look at what i'm making now with my better materials and my figured-out process and it's more refined but it doesn't hit the same way. i feel like i've gotten safer without meaning to. like i learned how to make things that don't embarrass me and lost whatever made people stop and stare. i don't want to romanticize being in a bad place just to make good art. i've worked too hard to get somewhere steadier. but i can't pretend i don't see the difference. anyone else feel like their messiest work has a pulse the polished stuff doesn't?

had a woman reach out about a piece for her new apartment. wanted something "meaningful" but she kept circling back to can you do it for less. i gave her my actual number, $400 for a 16x20 mixed media on panel, which is already on the low side for me. she did that thing where they pause too long and then say "okay" in a voice that means the opposite. i offered to do a smaller size or a simpler palette to bring it down and she said no she wanted the original idea. so i said alright well that's the price. she said she'd think about it. haven't heard back. it's been two weeks. the part that gets me is i know i could've quoted $250 and she'd have said yes and i'd be making the same thing for less and resenting it the whole time. but also $400 isn't nothing to me either so i'm sitting here like was i being stubborn or just not desperate yet. still don't know which one is true.