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So a gallery in my city reached out. They saw my work online. Want me in a group show this spring. This is literally the thing I've been wanting for years and instead of being excited I've spent the last week spiraling. I keep thinking about how I've never been in a studio program, never had a crit, never had anyone teach me how to hang a show or talk to a collector. I don't have a CV. I don't have an artist statement that doesn't sound like a journal entry. And now I'm supposed to show up next to people who did all that the right way. I painted through the anxiety last night and honestly the piece that came out might be the best thing I've made all year. So maybe the fraud feeling is the point? Like if you're not scared you're not pushing it far enough? Anyone else get the thing they wanted and immediately want to run from it? Or maybe I'm just overthinking this.

I took a commission back in February for a 16x20 landscape, a friend of a friend wanted a specific view from their vacation photos. I quoted $200 which is usually fair for that size and my level. What I didn't account for was the two weeks I spent staring at those reference photos, trying to figure out how to handle the lighting, sketching thumbnails in my head while I was folding laundry, completely rethinking the composition twice before I even touched a brush. By the time I actually started painting I had probably put in 6-8 hours of just... mental labor. And I didn't charge for any of it. Finished it in about 10 hours of actual painting time so the math works out to like $12/hour before supplies. I know you can't really bill for "thinking about it" but also, that was work, you know? It was work. I'm trying to figure out how to price differently next time without feeling like I'm nickel-and-diming someone. Maybe just raise the flat rate enough to cover it and stop overthinking.

Set up at a local fair this past Saturday and made a dumb mistake. I hung my favorite little still life right at the front of the booth, eye level, where everyone turns the corner. It sold before 10am. Great, right? Except the next 31 paintings just sat there for the rest of the day. The piece that would have pulled people deeper into the booth was gone before the crowd even showed up. I did the math on the way home. Sold one $65 piece and maybe 4 greetings cards. Meanwhile the booth next to me, a jewelry maker, had her whole display set up so there was no single focal point, and she was busy all afternoon. I think I keep treating this like a gallery wall when it's really a storefront. People browse the front, something catches them, they step in, they stay. Next fair I'm putting the good stuff in the middle and keeping the doorway bits simple. Anyone else hit this? Or am I overthinking crowds that mostly want a free mint?

I bought a decent printer last year thinking prints would be my side income. Got the good archival paper, color calibrated everything, spent way too many evenings fighting with it. Sold maybe six prints total, and two of those were to my mother in law. Meanwhile the original paintings sit in my booth at fairs and people keep asking about those instead. The overthinking it took me a full year to figure out: people buy the thing in front of them, they don't buy the reproduction of it. So I stopped pushing prints entirely and just started starting more originals at lower price points. Smaller 8x10s I can finish in two sittings now sell faster than anything I've ever made prints of. Sold nine of those in the last two months at the local craft market alone. Wish somebody had told me that a year and about 300 dollars in ink ago.

So I painted these two pet portraits, same size, same level of detail, both head-and-shoulders of someone's dog. A stranger commissioned me and I charged $150 and felt nervous about it. Then a friend from college asked me to do her cat and I immediately went "oh for you, $50" and then I painted the cat and it actually came out better than the stranger one. So my friend got the better painting for a third of the price and I keep thinking about that. Like I know we all do the friends and family discount thing and it's fine but it bothers me that my work isn't the same price regardless of who's asking. Or maybe it should be different because the relationship is different? My mom says I'm overthinking it because the friend will tell people and send me more work but also my mom thinks I should charge more for everything so I don't even know anymore. I guess I'm wondering where the line is between being generous with people you love and just devaluing your own time because you feel awkward asking for money from someone you actually know.

ok so I spent like a month earlier this year obsessing over my instagram grid, scheduling posts, planning reels, the whole thing. had a notion doc and everything. and you know what happened? nothing. flat engagement, same followers, maybe one sale from it. then I had this week where I just said fuck it and made 40 tiny test tiles, different clay bodies, glazes I mixed myself, firing temps I'd never tried. just messing around, no end goal. I posted them ugly, in progress, some failed. just the real process, no polish. those posts outperformed everything I "planned" by a lot. like triple the saves, actual comments from other potters, and two commissions from people who saw the test tiles and wanted something in that glaze. I think the audience can smell when you're performing vs when you're actually doing the work. the planning was me trying to look like a serious business. the test tiles were me being a ceramicist. anyone else find that the stuff you don't overthink just lands better?

Started this charcoal portrait this morning, big 18x24, just a woman's face emerging from black. Was fighting it for hours, everything going wrong, the nose kept drifting into a different face entirely. Almost shredded it like three times. Then around 4pm something clicked and I put this one mark in, just a hard diagonal through the cheekbone, and the whole thing SNAPPED into place. Like it had been waiting for me to stop overthinking. I literally yelled "THERE you are" at an empty room. This is why I do this. Those moments where the drawing starts drawing itself. Nobody else gets it but I know you guys do. What's the last mark you made that saved a whole piece?

ok so I spent months emailing galleries with these long, polished, cover-letter-style pitches and got crickets. then one day I was so burnt out I just sent this short casual one like "hi, I paint watercolor windows and light, here's 4 images, would love to show you in person" and THAT one got a reply. a real reply!! I genuinely think the formal stuff was reading as scared or stiff. my partner was like "you sound like you're applying for a law firm" lmao. so now I just write like a person. was there a version of your outreach email that finally landed? what was different about it? I'm trying to figure out if it's the length, the tone, or honestly just luck and timing and I should stop overthinking. tell me I'm wrong or right

I have this habit where every new piece I want to talk myself out of the idea first. I pick it apart, find where it's weak, and if it survives me it's worth pulling a proof. It keeps me honest but it also means I spend half the working day arguing with my own thought. Today I did the opposite. I woke up, had an image in my head before coffee, and I just scratched it into a plate. No framework. No question behind it. It was almost embarrassing, like showing up somewhere underdressed. And you know what the proof looks like? Dead. It looks exactly like something I didn't think about. Which is its own kind of lesson, I suppose, but not the one I wanted to learn. I'm trying to figure out if there's a middle ground between overthinking every mark and just making it badly. Because right now the two speeds are: seminar, or garbage. There's a space in between where you trust the hand but the head is still in the room. I don't know how to get there. Maybe it's just volume. Maybe I have to make fifty bad ones. Anyway, the plate is still on the table. I haven't decided if I'm going to print it or scrub it. Part of me wants to keep it exactly as it is, as evidence.

A man at the garden centre watched me inspect three identical sedum plants for several minutes and felt moved to inform me that they were, in fact, all the same variety. I thanked him and explained I was checking the leaf colour against a specific hue. He told me I was overthinking it. The leaves were green, he said, and that was that. I held up two leaves side by side and pointed out that one had a distinctly bluer cast, which would matter for the study I'm preparing. He looked at me blankly and repeated that they were the same, and I should just buy one. I did not buy any of them. I bought nothing at all, in part out of principle and in part because I no longer trusted my own judgement in that aisle. The frustrating part is not the man himself. He was harmless, if tedious. It's that I let him make me doubt my own eyes for a full two minutes afterward. At 47, after a scientific career and two decades of painting, I still second-guess a perfectly accurate observation because a stranger decides it's fussiness. I should know better by now. I keep telling myself I will stand firmer next time, and then I don't.

ok so I used to be SO precious about my palette, like everything had to be squeezed out in neat little rows, same order every time, I'd scrape it clean after every session. And lately? complete chaos. I've got dried crusts of ultramarine from three days ago, a blob of rose madder that's started to separate, some random mix I forgot about that's actually a perfect grey I'm terrified of losing. And I'm painting better?? Like the mess is forcing me to work faster and stop overthinking every color choice. I just dip into whatever's there and make it work. My partner walked by and said "babe it looks like a murder scene" and honestly they're not wrong but I'm kind of into it now. Anyone else's workspace get worse as the work gets better or is this just me being feral

there's this artist I keep noticing who posts the same kind of piece over and over, slight variations, and their comments are full of "this is stunning" and "where can I buy". mine are usually 3 likes and one bot. but last month I wrote a long boring wall text about how I distress the paper and how the varnish behaves and three people actually bought something. not the pretty post. the nerdy one. I don't know what to do with that. the fun stuff is more fun. but the gallery text pulled actual money. maybe people who buy art want to feel like theyre learning something, not watching a show. anyway I'm probably overthinking it. I just wish the thing that got traction and the thing that got sales were the same post, once, instead of always having to choose.