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Today one gentleman came to our cooperative stall. He liked one painting, the one with the fish and the lotus, took maybe twenty minutes to decide. Then he said, "This is too much. For folk art? You people enjoy making it. Reduce by half." I reduced by ten percent only, because the colours I used, the handmade paper, the many hours. He was not satisfied but he paid. Then he asked, will I teach his daughter also. I said yes, I teach girls in my village, it is my work and my joy. He said, "Good. Then teach her also, no charge, since you enjoy it so much." As if my enjoyment is the payment. As if the art feeds us on appreciation alone. I said kindly, ji, the enjoyment I have is true, but the rice also must come from somewhere. He looked at me like I had said something rude. I am fifty-six years old and still explaining that my hands are labour and my traditions are worth something. Some days I am tired of teaching this lesson to grown men.

I got a message from a friend on Tuesday morning, a photo actually. The old house on 4th Cross, the one with the red oxide floor and the wooden balcony with the turned railing posts. Gone. Just the compound wall and a pile of rubble and two men sitting on it having tea. I have eleven sketches of that house. Eleven. From different angles, different mornings, different light. And I still felt like I hadn't really looked at it. That's the thing that gets me. I could draw a building a hundred times and still not be sure I actually saw it, and then one day it's a pile and the sketches are all I have and some of them are wrong. The proportions off, the balcony too high, the shadow in the wrong place. When I was an architect I used to draw buildings so they could be built. Now I draw them so they can be remembered and honestly I'm not sure I'm any better at it. Different job, same feeling of missing something. Not looking for advice on this one. Just wanted to say it out loud somewhere. Tuesday was a bad day.

ok so I'm at the art supply store today picking out watercolor paper, like actually taking my time because this stuff is expensive and I have a specific feel I'm going for for this piece I'm doing, and this older guy who works there comes up and goes "that stuff's overrated, you should try this" and hands me this cheap cold press that buckles if you breathe on it wrong. I said "oh thanks, I'm looking for the hot press actually" and he goes "no no, cold press is better for beginners, you'll get better results." like sir. I have a BFA. I have been painting with watercolor for eight years. I paint literally every single day. I did not ask for your opinion on my paper. and I just stood there holding my paper and being like "okay thanks" because I'm 26 and I still default to being polite and then I walked away and fumed about it the whole drive home. why do men do this. why is it always at the art store. I have never once had a woman employee at an art store assume I don't know what I'm doing. not once. anyway I bought the hot press and it's beautiful and I'm going to paint something really good on it out of spite. that's the plan.

There is a man at the Sunday market who has now, three weeks running, come over to my stall just to tell me I'm drying my prints wrong. Not buying. Not asking. Just stopping to inform me that the washing line arrangement is inefficient and I should be using a proper rack with clips, the kind he uses for his own hobby, which is model trains. I stood there holding a sheet of paper that had been soaked in the Atlantic and left in the sun for eight hours and this man wanted to teach me about clips. The thing is, I smiled and nodded. I always do. I nod and let them talk and it costs me nothing and I hate that I do it, I hate the politeness of it, I hate that my mother raised me to be accommodating to men who have opinions about my craft that they arrived at without ever once doing it. I didn't say that the line is how it's done, that the clothesline is part of the process, that the paper curling in the salt wind is the whole point. I just said "hm" and handed his change back. I have been thinking about it all week. Not the man. The nod.

guy at the market today pointed at the largest original i brought, dead serious, "how much for this print?" told him it wasn't a print, it was the actual painting. he nodded, looked at it again, and asked if i could "do him another one just like it." sir. it's one of a kind. that's literally the value proposition. i don't have a ctrl+c for paint. he walked off when i told him the price and i heard him mutter "jesus" under his breath like i'd insulted his mother. ngl that part was kind of worth it. the most exhausting part of this hobby-gig isn't the painting. it's the explaining. every single market i do the same six conversations with the same six men named dave or kevin or brad. i should just print a FAQ and staple it to the table.

A canvas I finished in March left the studio this week. Two meters by one fifty, eleven layers, the last three mostly scraping back what I'd done the day before. The buyer is a woman from Düsseldorf who has bought twice before and never once asked me what it means, which I appreciate more than I can say. The truck came Tuesday morning. Two men, blankets, ratchet straps, the whole ritual. And I stood in the doorway with my coffee and watched them tip it into the van and I felt this lurch, ganz kurz, like a door closing somewhere in the building. Not sadness exactly. More like the moment the work stops being mine. While it's on the wall it belongs to the day I made it. The second it's wrapped it becomes an object with a value and a wall to hang on and that is a different thing entirely. I've sold work for twenty years and this still happens. My wife says I should be pleased and I am, the money is real, the studio rent is real. But I went back inside and the wall where it hung was just wall. I mixed a grey for a new one and it came out wrong, too warm, and I left it. Do you keep any of the big ones? I have three in the back room that I will probably never sell, and I'm not sure anymore if that's discipline or cowardice.

I've got a piece on the bench right now, welded steel figure about four feet tall. It's been "done" three times this week. Every time I walk past it I see one more weld I could dress down or a line I could push a quarter inch. I know the difference between stopping because it's done and stopping because I'm out of gas, but I'm not sure the piece knows. My old teacher had a rule: the last thing you do should be the smallest thing you did. If you're making big moves at the end you started too late. I've gone back and forth on whether that's actually true or just something old men tell themselves so they can quit. What's your tell? The thing you notice when a piece is actually finished and not just abandoned?

driving home from a drop-off with a big framed piece in the back seat. some guy in the lot sees me reversing slowly, and instead of waiting, he leans on his horn, rolls down his window and starts waving his arms like he's landing a plane. so i stop. because what else. then he gets out and comes over and says "you're too close to that truck, let me guide you." i didn't ask. i was fine. there was a full car length. he stands behind my bumper shouting "little more, little more, okay stop, you're good" and i do it just to end it. then he pats the back of my car like it's a horse he just calmed and walks off. never even a thanks, or sorry for the horn, nothing. just my daily reminder that men will insert themselves into a situation i had fully handled and then take credit for my own parking job. should have just waited him out. next time i'm sitting there with my hazards on until he leaves.

Found it at a demolition site in Žižkov back when they were tearing out the old telephone exchange. Bakelite, the handset still on the cord. Two men and a handcart to get it up the stairs, I remember my back hurt for a week and I told everyone it was worth it, which it was not, physically. It has never worked. There is no line to it. It stands in the corner next to the radiator and it has been in four shows now, twice as itself and twice half-buried in rubble where you could only see the receiver. What I like is the weight of the handset. You pick it up and your arm remembers something you didn't know it remembered. I have watched people walk past everything else in the room and stop at this dead phone and just stand there holding it to their ear with nothing on the other end. One woman talked into it for maybe two minutes. I did not ask what she said. I paid 400 crowns for a thing that does nothing and it has done more work than most of my ideas that cost money. Make of that what you like. I have stopped trying to.