Search

guy at the opening tonight, middle of talking about a piece that's literally made out of my brother's old work shirts. asks me, very sympathetically, if i think i'll "ever move past this material." like it's a stylistic tic i'll grow out of. like the whole thing is a mood. i just said "it's a material." and walked off to refill my wine. i know he meant well. i know. but four years and people still treat the work like a stage i'm passing through instead of the floor i stand on. i don't need to be handled. i need people to stop asking when i'll be done with it.

I took the "oil on linen, 30x40" caption out of my posts for a month. Not the hashtags, not the process videos, just that little line at the end. I've always put it there out of habit, like a signature. Collectors want to know what they're buying, I told myself. The change was not dramatic but it was real. People started commenting about the light in the room, the mood of the thing, what the woman in the painting was thinking. Before it was mostly "beautiful work" and other painters asking about my medium. I think the technical note was giving people permission to look at it like a spec sheet instead of letting them just feel it. Once the frame of reference was gone they had to meet the painting on its own terms. I put the information back when the piece sells, obviously. But the post itself, the first encounter, I leave it bare now. The gallery can do the talking about dimensions and materials. My job on social media is to make someone stop scrolling because something in the image got under their skin, and I was undercutting that with my own footnotes. Maybe that's just me. Or maybe we all over-explain ourselves online because we're afraid of being misunderstood, and the fear itself is what keeps people at arm's length.

Finished a big charcoal piece tonight, two figures tangled up, and I stood there for like ten minutes just... oscillating. Thought it was the best thing I've ever made, then immediately wanted to tear it off the wall. Same painting. Nothing changed. Just my stupid brain flipping a coin. The scary part is I've learned to trust the hate more than the love. The love is my ego showing off. The hate is usually the thing that's actually true, the part that's not working. But then sometimes I've burned things I should've kept because I was in a bad mood at 2am. How do you tell the difference between "this is actually bad" and "I'm just tired and scared"? I genuinely don't know and I've been doing this for years. Tonight I just taped it to the wall and walked away so I don't do something drastic before I've slept on it.

I spent three weeks fighting this gouache piece of my apartment window in the rain, I genuinely could not stand it the entire time, kept almost scraping it off the paper and starting over. Posted the finished thing mostly out of spite and exhaustion. It's the most saved piece on my site this month and two people have asked about prints and one person messaged about commissioning something similar. Meanwhile the window painting I actually love, the one I finished and immediately wanted to frame myself, sits there with like 40 likes lol. I know the whole "the work you hate is the work they love" thing is basically a cliche at this point but it still gets me every time. I have no idea what makes one land and the other flop. Is it the colors? The mood? The fact that it's messier and more honest? I genuinely can't reverse engineer it, I'm just out here throwing paint and praying. Anyone else have a piece they lowkey despise that the audience latched onto?

I've been doing the whole "wake up, post a nice finished piece, tag materials, use hashtags, be consistent" thing for months and it's been working okay but like... okay. Then last week I was in a really bad mood about a painting I'd been fighting with for three days, the wash was drying wrong, everything was lifting when I went back in, and I just filmed myself scraping the whole thing off with a palette knife and going "well, that's going in the bin" and posted it on a whim. No caption strategy. Just pure frustration. That stupid, messy, nothing video has more saves and shares than anything I've posted in the last two months. And it's not even a good video, it's just real. I've had four commissions come through from it, including one from someone who said "I don't know anything about art but I felt that." I keep hearing we're supposed to "provide value" and "educate" and I'm not against that but I think maybe the value is just... letting people see you fail? In real time? Without making it a tidy lesson? I don't know, I'm still trying to figure out if I can be that messy on purpose or if it only works when it's genuine. Anybody else finding that the stuff you almost didn't post is the stuff that works?

I realised something yesterday while I was pulling proofs that I already knew but hadn't admitted: the part I love most is the preparation. The drawing on the plate, the aquatint, the biting, the masking. The thinking part. Then I get to the printing and something in me checks out. I rush it. I'm already onto the next idea. I used to think this meant I was lazy or not a "real" printmaker but maybe it's just that my brain likes potential more than completion. The proof is where everything is still possible. Once it's an edition it's just... fixed. Decided. I have about 40 copper plates sitting in a drawer that are etched and ready and I haven't printed. Some from two years ago. I tell myself I'm saving them for the right paper or the right mood but honestly I think I just don't want them to be finished. Anyone else work this way or am I just avoiding the hard part?

Started a thing back in January where I decided to paint the window in my studio apartment every single week until I got it right. The one good window, faces this ugly courtyard with a fire escape and one tree that's half dead but tries anyway in spring. 11 paintings in now and honestly? The 9th one is the winner and I didn't even know it when I made it. I painted it on a day I was furious about a commission going sideways and I did the whole thing in like 40 minutes without thinking, and it's got this looseness the other ten are choking for. The careful ones all look like I was holding my breath. The angry one breathes. Makes me want to throw out everything I've learned about patience honestly. Or at least stop treating every wash like it's a final exam. Anyway the window has now become a whole series and I don't know what to do with the other ten. They're fine. They're just... fine. Stiff. Like me at a party. Does anyone else have that piece where the version you made in a bad mood or a hurry is better than the one you actually tried on? I need to know I'm not alone here because I'm about to start 12 and I'm scared she's gonna be a stiff one too haha

I was reorganizing my supplies this week and counted eleven jars of water sitting around the studio in various states of use. Eleven. My husband walked in, looked at the collection, and asked if I was conducting an experiment. I told him I was, and had been for thirty years. People economize on paint, on paper, on brushes, and I understand all of it. But water is the variable I will not cut corners on. A tired wash full of lifted pigment is the difference between a leaf that looks alive and one that looks painted. When I teach, I make students change their water after every third wash and they always think I'm being precious. Then they see the two paintings side by side and they stop arguing. Distilled water for mixing, tap for cleaning, and never the two shall meet. I know it sounds like superstition. Maybe it is, at this point. But there's a particular blue-gray that only appears in water that's been sitting overnight, and I've learned to recognize it the way you'd recognize a bad mood in a friend. Some days I paint with it anyway, just to see what happens.

I keep noticing it in my slab pots and cups with faces pressed into them: every single one reads sad, even the ones I'm not trying to make sad. I'll be in a good mood, building something playful, and then I open the kiln and it's just this wall of melancholy staring back at me. I think the problem is the glaze pooling in the eye line. I carve the face before bisque, put a white slip on top, and the glaze settles heavy into those scored lines, so the mouth curves down even when I made it straight. The piece is technically fine, the proportions work, but the feeling is wrong and I can't control it. This one with the little figure on the shoulder, I genuinely meant it to look mid-laugh and it came out like she's seen some things. Anyone else fighting the emotional accident thing? Where the material does the opposite of what you intended and it works, but only if you lean into it? I keep trying to fix it with the tools and I think I need to fix it with the glaze math instead.

I spent yesterday going through the last month's failed prints instead of making new ones. Lined them all up on the long table in the studio, maybe thirty of them. Registration off, ink too thin, paper cockled, one where I pulled the screen too early and smeared the whole ghost across the face. The strange thing is, lined up like that, they look like a series. Coherent, almost intentional. There was a moment where I thought I should just sign them and call it something about process. I didn't. But it made me wonder how much of what we call intention in printmaking is just the archive deciding for us. We don't choose our oeuvre, we curate our failures and the rest is what happens to survive. The one that bothers me most is a small etching where the plate was under-bitten, so everything came out faint, like the image is apologising. I keep coming back to it. Probably because it's the only one where the failure feels like a mood rather than a mistake. Anyway. The table is clean again. I'll make new mistakes tomorrow.

the ikea clamp lamp i've had for like 12 years finally gave out today. the little arm joint just... gave up. it's been through three apartments and two studios and i know it's a $15 lamp i could replace in an hour but i'm genuinely annoyed. that light hit my desk exactly right. the new ones all have that cold led hum. maybe i'm just in a mood. been picking at a piece for three weeks that should've resolved itself by now and it keeps refusing. charcoal feels wrong, paint feels wrong, the paper's starting to look rubbed raw. might be time to just set it aside and start something bad on purpose just to break the spell.

ok so I mixed this green glaze a month ago and every cone 6 firing it's a whole different color. first batch came out a deep forest with a matte finish, second one bright almost jade, third one this weird grey-green that I actually hated and then loved by the end of the week. same recipe, same bucket, same clay body. the only variable is how long I let it sit between firings and I'm starting to think that's the whole story. I've got three vessels sitting in the same kiln load right now, all dipped in the same bucket at the same time, and I'm genuinely nervous they'll come out as three different greens. which would be fine if I wasn't trying to sell them as a set. I know the ceramic answer is probably "just mix it fresh every time" but there's something I like about the unreliability, you know? like the glaze has its own mood that day. is that a cop-out or is that actually a thing people lean into?

ok so I've been circling this one piece for like three weeks, a view from my kitchen window at dusk, the one I paint over and over, but with all this heavy gray-green raincloud coming in. And I kept ruining it because I was trying to make it look "dramatic" and "serious art" or whatever and it just kept coming out dead and muddy. Then yesterday I was in a mood, like genuinely anxious about money and whether I'm wasting my savings on this full-time thing, and I just grabbed my brush and went at it without thinking. And I let the water take it where it wanted, didn't fight it, didn't try to control every bloom. And it's the most alive thing I've painted in months. The clouds look like they're moving. My partner came home and said "that one feels like you." I think I've been so scared of making bad art that I forgot the good stuff comes from the same place. Anyway it's drying on my table and I keep walking past and going "oh, there you are." Just wanted to tell someone who'd get it 🙂

I've never once gotten a reply from a cold email. Not one. But the two actual gallery conversations I've had came from walking in somewhere with a small portfolio and just talking to whoever was at the desk like a human. Both times they said "email us" and both times nothing happened after lol. So what's the real move here? Do people actually land shows from cold outreach or is it all who you know and showing your face? Tell me I'm wrong, I want to be wrong, I'm tired of driving places with my work in the trunk hoping someone's in a good mood.

swept the studio today for the first time in weeks and honestly it's a documentary. there's a dried puddle of matte medium where I tried to decoupage something at 11pm and gave up. a pile of charcoal dust that only goes in one spot because I keep sharpening over the same corner like an animal. and one single screw that I have no memory of ever dropping but it's been there so long it's rusted into the wood. the floor is basically archaeology. you could date my bad moods by the paint splatters. thick and muddy = tuesday. thin and watery = I was crying or hungover, hard to tell. anyway the screw is still there. I put a pencil next to it. maybe I'll deal with it eventually. probably not.