Search

I had a show last November. Sixteen paintings, two months of work, the usual opening-night crowd, wine, awkward conversations, people stepping close to a canvas and then stepping back. Zero sales that night. Not one red dot. I stood by the door and watched people leave and thought, well, that's that. Next morning I had three emails. A critic from a local paper, a blogger I'd never heard of, and someone from a small museum in Chemnitz. All of them had been there. All of them wrote something. The museum person asked for a studio visit. The sales came later, slowly, over months, to people who'd read those pieces and then come to the gallery on a quiet Tuesday afternoon. I'm not saying openings are useless. But the thing I thought was a failure, the empty ledger from that night, turned out to be the most valuable part. The people who write are never the people who buy on the spot. They're the ones who need to sit with it, go home, think, and then tell someone else. I still hate the feeling of an opening where nothing moves. But I've stopped reading it as a signal.

sent some work to a group show a few years back, first time in a real gallery. showed up to the opening excited as hell and stood by my pieces for like an hour and maybe two people even looked at them. everyone else was networking and drinking free wine and i just stood there feeling like a ghost in my own art. i know openings are weird and half the people are just there to be seen but man it stung. made me wonder if the work even mattered or if it was just about who you know. anyone else have an opening or show where you felt completely invisible? how'd you handle it? i just left early and sulked lol

almost didnt open the email, it was buried in promotions. an actual juried gallery open call, and they want to see THREE pieces from me. me. ive spent so long assuming these things are for other people, the ones with the right degrees and the right contacts. im submitting tonight before i talk myself out of it. wish me luck, or talk me out of the spiral, whichever one you think i need more

Found a box in the back of the closet today. Ex's stuff, the stuff I couldn't give to Goodwill after we split. Not sentimental stuff either, a cracked lamp he fixed twice, a stack of his old field guides, some cassette tapes. Four years and I still can't bring myself to open it, let alone get rid of it. Weird part is I don't miss him. The marriage was done long before the divorce was. But that box is the one thing I won't touch. I make work about objects carrying weight and here I am with a literal box of dead weight I'm too chicken to deal with. Maybe it becomes a piece someday. Maybe that's the only way I let myself look at it.

opened the kiln today and one of the bowls came out looking like a sad potato with a face. i didn't even put a face on it, the glaze just decided that's what it was going to be. i'm honestly keeping it. it's the most honest piece i've made in weeks. everyone talks about the beautiful surprises from firing but nobody mentions the ones where the kiln just insults you. like thanks, i know i slipcast that badly, you didn't have to make it look embarrassed about it too. putting the potato out at the market next sunday with a little sign. "face not intended." see if anyone bites.

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.

I still get a little annoyed thinking about this. Had a gallery interested in showing some of my landscapes a couple years back, which felt huge for me at the time. Then in the conversation they mentioned I'd be expected to cover the catering for the opening night. Not split, not share, me, fully. I was so flattered by the offer I almost said yes before common sense kicked in. What's the weirdest thing a gallery has asked you to pay for or provide? I want to know if the wine thing is actually normal somewhere or if I was right to walk.

This one still makes me laugh. Years ago, a small gallery in Athens said yes to showing my work, then hit me with a list of costs I'd need to cover, including the wine for opening night. Like I was supposed to hand over cash so people could get drunk looking at my mosaics. I said no, and the show fell through. I know the line between a fair split and getting taken advantage of gets blurry sometimes, especially when you're starting out and just want someone to say yes. So where's the line for you? What's the thing a gallery asked for that made you walk, or should have made you walk?

Early in my career, a decent gallery in a decent city offered me a solo show. Then quietly mentioned I'd be covering the opening, drinks, food, printed invites, the whole thing. I was young and hungry so I said yes. Spent half the sale before the work sold. Told myself it was normal. It wasn't. What's the most creative expense a gallery has tried to push onto you? I'll start: someone once asked me to pay for the insurance on the venue, not the work. The venue.

Got asked to do a live demo at a gallery opening in Athens next month. They said "the guests would love to watch you work." I said do you know what mosaic looks like in real time? Because I sit on a pillow on the floor and cut one piece of stone at a time and stare at it for ten minutes before I set it. That's a Tuesday. It's not performance, it's just slow. They said it's fine, people find it meditative. We'll see. Anyone else get asked to turn their studio practice into a show and find out it doesn't translate?

ok so i was talking to a gallery a few months back, small one, seemed nice, and then near the end they go "oh and we ask our artists to cover the opening drinks and food, about 200€, standard thing" and i just sat there like... is this standard??? i said i'd think about it and never wrote back. what's the wildest thing a gallery has tried to make you pay for? i need to know if i'm too suspicious or if that's actually crazy.

ok so my first ever "opportunity", a small gallery, kinda run down, I was so excited I'd have said yes to anything. and they wanted ME to cover the opening night drinks. like hundreds of dollars for wine for strangers. I did it because I didn't know any better. 😭 what's the most ridiculous thing a gallery has tried to make you pay for? or asked you to provide that made you go... wait what. I need to know I'm not the only one who got played early on

Honest one. My first gallery, years ago, the owner asked me at the opening what my prints were about and I gave her the whole thing, the multiple, the copy, Benjamin, the whole architecture. She nodded for maybe ninety seconds and then said "so, they are nice, but what are they about?" I still think about that. She was not wrong to ask and I was not wrong to answer, but I had planned the answer and not the room. Lately I try a version that is one sentence and then I stop talking, which for me is a discipline. What is yours? The real one you say out loud, not the one on the website. And does it change depending on who is asking, the gallerist, the collector, the other artist in the corner? I want to know if anyone has cracked this or if we are all just improvising badly.

I finally sat down and looked at where last year's sales actually came from. Three paintings, all three to people who had seen the work in person first: one at a two-day botanical illustration symposium in Asheville, two through my open studio weekend in October. Not one sale came from anything I posted. Not one. Meanwhile I've spent a year learning how to shoot vertical video, which I am not good at and do not enjoy, and I'm reasonably sure I've converted the account into an audience of people who like watching paint dry in the literal sense. They came for the process and they are not buyers. That's not a complaint about them. It's a complaint about me not noticing for twelve months. What I have not worked out is whether the online thing is genuinely wasted effort or just too slow to measure, and I suspect nobody can actually tell me. The symposium cost me a table fee, four nights in a hotel, and a week of framing, and it paid for itself in the first hour. I'm keeping the account. I've stopped pretending it's a shop.

so my tiny solo show opened tonight in a gallery that's basically a hallway, which was fine because I expected maybe 12 people total. 14 pieces sold before I even finished my first glass of wine. which is great obviously. except now the gallery wants a second wave of work for the rest of the month and I have nothing left. I'm not saying I'm cursed but I did just spend two hours staring at blank canvas going "I have no ideas" while my one sold-out painting stares back at me from the wall like a smug little bitch. anyway if anyone needs me I'll be in the studio panic-painting fruit. congrats to me I guess lol

Got approached by a small local gallery recently, really liked the space, seemed legit. Then they sent the contract and there was a line about me covering the cost of the opening reception, drinks, snacks, etc. I've heard of artist paying for their own prints or whatever but this one caught me off guard. I passed on it but now I'm wondering if that's more normal than I think? Has anyone else run into this? Did you pay it or walk?

I did the math on a recent sale because I was trying to convince myself it was worth it. Large oil and cold wax, 160 x 200 cm, worked on it for about six weeks on and off. Gallery takes 50%, which is standard here. Fine. Then: stretcher bars and canvas, oil, cold wax medium, pigment, about €280 because I don't buy cheap canvas. Transport to Berlin in a hired van because it wouldn't fit in my car, €120. Insurance for the transit. The opening, where I bought drinks for a few people and we all went to dinner after, and I picked up the bill because the gallery director looked at me and I knew I was supposed to. That was about €340. So €4,200 becomes €2,100 after commission. Subtract €740 in costs I can track. That leaves €1,360. Then maybe six weeks of work, but not full-time weeks, so call it 18 days. That's about €75 a day. And I haven't paid tax on the €2,100 yet. I don't know what to do with this information. The painting is sold. The collector is happy. The gallery wants more. And I'm sitting here thinking I should feel good and instead I feel like I ran a small business that lost money on a job. Which I did, if I paid myself minimum wage. The problem is the painting wouldn't exist without those weeks. I can't separate the time from the thing. And the gallery can't sell a painting they never see. And I can't get the painting to Berlin for nothing. So the costs are real and the math is bad and I don't have a solution. Just the numbers.

It's sitting on the shelf above the palette, unopened, and I've been walking past it for two weeks. Flake white, the real one, with lead. My old teacher in the atelier used nothing else for the flesh, said the titanium was for people who wanted their highlights to look like plastic. He was a difficult man and mostly right. Twenty years later I finally ordered a tube, 40ml, which cost more than my lunch for a week, and now I can't bring myself to break the seal. Part of it is the safety business, of course. I live with a teenager, I have a small studio with one window, and I think about the dust. Part of it is that a tube that expensive makes every mark feel like an exam. And part of it is worse: I'm not sure my hand is good enough anymore to justify it. That's the real reason it's still closed. Bof. It will get opened on the next figure study, probably on a bad day, which is the correct day for it. Does anyone else do this? Buy the good thing and then leave it on the shelf like a hostage?

For years I thought I was supposed to want fresh air. The romantic studio image, non? Open window, breeze, plein air feeling. I forced myself. This week I closed it. Put on the shitty little air conditioner I bought in secret. The light is exactly the same. The paint stayed wet longer because it wasn't drying out in a draft. I was calmer. I worked an hour past when I usually stop because I wasn't getting cold and annoyed. All that performative suffering for nothing. I could have been comfortable this whole time.

after six straight firings where something cracked, blew up, or decided to become a puddle at the bottom, i finally opened the kiln this morning and everything came out in one piece. like actually recognisable as the things i put in there. i stood there holding a little face jug like it was a newborn or something. dumb smile on my face. my studio mate was like "are you okay" and i was like no i'm not okay actually this has never happened before. the little victories. the bar is on the floor and i'm still celebrating.