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so I'm shipping a painting to a buyer, right, my first sale in like two months that's actually a decent chunk of change, and I've spent 45 minutes bubble-wrapping this thing like it's a hostage situation. I get to the UPS store and the guy behind the counter watches me put it on the scale and goes "you know, you really should be using a rigid mailer, not a box, the box is gonna shift around in transit." and I'm like oh okay thanks but it's already packed pretty tight, I've got foam corners, it's fine. and he just WOULD NOT let it go. he's like "I ship art all the time, you're gonna get a claim" and starts telling me about the proper way to do it while I'm standing there with my debit card out. like sir I did not ask. I did not come here for a consultation. I came here to pay you $18 to put a sticker on my box. I know he was probably trying to be helpful but I was this close to being like "okay and how many watercolor paintings have YOU shipped that were still wet this morning and you stayed up too late stressing about the corners", I didn't say it because I'm a coward but I wanted to. anyway it arrived fine. no claim. I'm gonna frame that delivery confirmation and put it on my wall.

Ran the edition of the heron prints down to the last one today and the fella who bought it was the first person all day who didn't try to haggle. Just handed over the cash and said "that's for my mother, she loves the birds." Fair play to him. Nice way to finish the stall, walking home with an empty tube and a bit of a bounce in the step. Some days you sell one, some days you sell nothing and you'd swear the dog was looking at you sideways for it, but today the whole run's gone and that's a good feeling all round. The mother in question better like the print now, that's all I'm saying. 🌟

Six canvases. Six. I thought I was saving time, buying them already stretched by people who supposedly know what they're doing. Every single one has a little depression right in the middle, like someone pressed a fist into it before the glue dried. I sized them anyway, hoping it would tighten up. It didn't. Now I've got to either strip them and re-stretch myself or paint around a soft spot for the next three months. I know the answer is "do it yourself." I do. But sometimes you just want to buy a thing and have it be the thing you bought, non? I'm too old to be surprised by this and yet here I am, surprised.

I finally did it. I packed up my little travel easel and drove out to the lake this morning before the kids woke up, and painted the same view I've been chickening out on since June. The light on the water kept changing every fifteen minutes and I nearly gave up twice, but I just kept blocking in and repainting until something stuck. It's not my best work. But it's the first plein air thing I've actually seen through to the end instead of coming home with a muddy mess and a headache. I've been doing that since my workshop in April and I thought maybe outdoor painting just wasn't for me. Anyway. It's propped up in the kitchen drying and I keep walking past it feeling weirdly proud. If you've been avoiding trying something new for months, just pack the bag and go. The worst case is you come home with a muddy mess and a headache, which is where you already are.

I had a booth at a local craft fair Saturday and a woman picked up one of my acrylic landscapes, looked at it for a good minute, and said "oh this is nice, I could probably do this with my daughter's $5 watercolor set." And I just stood there like... okay. So do it then? I'd love to see you mix titanium white into a puddle of Crayola paint and get that kind of coverage on canvas. Please. Film it. I didn't say any of that of course. I smiled and said "you should give it a try, it's really relaxing!" and she moved on. My husband said I was too nice and I probably was but also what's the point. People who think art supplies are all the same are not people you're going to convince in one conversation at a folding table. Still felt like packing up my easel and going home though.

Ach, I'm still buzzing off this. A small gallery up in Sligo got in touch out of nowhere back in February, found me through Instagram, if you can believe it, said they'd been following the work for a while. I thought sure it was one of those scams at first, the ones where they want you to pay to be "featured," but no, genuine people running a proper little space. Sent them a dozen prints this morning, all matted and packed proper. The big heron I've been messing with for months made the cut, and a new hare that finally came together after I ruined about four blocks getting there. Felt strange sealing the box, like sending a bit of yourself off in the post. But good strange. Never had a gallery come to me before. Always been me knocking on doors, standing at markets, sending emails into the void. Nice to be on the other end of it for once. Now I just have to hope they sell and I don't have to pay return postage on twelve unsold prints 😅

Tried plein air for the first time last Sunday. Picked a little spot by the creek, got all set up, and the wind just wrecked me. My easel tipped over twice, a leaf landed wet side down right in the middle of my sky, and I packed it up after about forty minutes with maybe ten minutes of actual painting done. But here's the thing. I got more done in those ten minutes than I do in a whole afternoon of painting from photos. The light on the water was doing something I've never been able to fake in the studio. I've been chasing that same look for weeks from reference photos and it's always flat. Now I'm looking at those little wind-proof clamps for the canvas and a heavier easel, and I keep checking the forecast for a calm day. I think this is my new thing. Just wish I'd tried it before I turned forty.

I bought a pack of those super cheap synthetic brushes at Michael's a few months ago, like $8 for a dozen, just to beat up on for texture work and practice pieces. And now I reach for them almost every time over the nice ones my husband got me for Christmas. They're not even good brushes. The ferrule is wobbly and one of them is already shedding. But they're the exact right stiffness for how I actually paint, and I'm not scared to mess them up. That's the thing. The nice ones sit in the jar and I keep talking myself out of using them because what if I ruin them. Meanwhile the $8 ones are doing all the real work. I think I need to just give the good ones to a purpose. Use them on a piece I actually care about and stop treating them like they're museum pieces. Anyone else have brushes they are weirdly protective of and never use? Or am I just hoarding nice art supplies like everybody does.

The radiator in my studio gave up yesterday. Temperature this morning was just above freezing. I put on a second sweater and stayed because I realised the cold was doing something I'd never deliberately tried, the cold wax was setting up almost immediately, the oil was stiff, the marks were staying exactly where they landed instead of bleeding or shifting. Normally I fight that, want the slow drag, the uncertainty. Today I worked with it and it was like a different vocabulary. I don't know if there's anything useful in that, or if I was just too stubborn to pack up and go home. Probably both. But I'll fix the heater tomorrow.

sure look we've all got a horror story or two about walking into a gallery with your portfolio and knowing inside five minutes it was a dead loss. give us the worst one. I'll go first. maybe eight years ago, still pretty green, got a meeting with this gallery in a city I won't name. small place, grand, but the fella running it spent the whole time looking at his phone while I was pulling prints out. didn't ask me one question about the work. then he told me he could "make me" if I was willing to "compromise a little" which turned out to mean make stuff that looked like the fella three doors down who was selling. I packed up my stuff, thanked him, and he actually said "are you sure" like I was the one wasting his time. still makes my blood warm thinking about it. what about ye? ever walk into a meeting and wish you'd stayed in bed?

I had a gallery years back that wanted me to sign over rights to the work for the duration of the show. Not reproduction rights, the actual work. If it sold, fine, if it didn't, they kept it. I told them no and never went back. What's the one thing a gallery asked for that made you pack your stuff up?

There's a proper black magic to the first pull of an edition. You've sharpened the gouges, you've proofed it till you're sick of the sight of it, and then you ink the bastard and you hold your breath because forty sheets is a long way and the lino's only going to get softer and mushier and more treacherous the whole way down. Anyway. Forty prints off the whale mooring block today, every last one clean. Not a dry spot, not a slip, not a bit of the fine line work packing up. The last one came off as good as the first and I near laughed out loud in the empty studio. The dog looked at me like I'd lost the run of myself entirely. There's a lot of the job you can't control, sure. Paper that decides to cockle on you, ink that goes off, a Tuesday. But that one hour, that run of forty, that was mine. Nobody else's. Felt like the whole craft thing was worth a damn today.

Y'all ever had a gallery say no but leave you with something you didn't expect? Mine was years back, a woman up in Chattanooga looked at my quilts, turned one over slow like she was reading it, and said "these aren't craft, they're testimony" and still didn't take me on. Sent me home with her card and a word about a fiber show I'd never heard of. That show got me my first real collector. I think about her sometimes. She never did hang my work, but she gave me more than a wall ever would. Got a gallery "no" that turned into a door opening somewhere else? Or one that just made you pack up and keep going?

First gallery I ever worked with sent me a list of shipping requirements longer than their contract. Specific box dimensions, exact void fill, white gloves for handling, photos of every step. I thought it was ridiculous until the first piece arrived cracked because I skimped on the packing. What's the most unreasonable delivery or install requirement a gallery ever gave you? And did they turn out to be right?

A fella came up to me at the Saturday market in Galway, couple of months back. Wanted a heron, A4 size, framed, for his mother's 80th. Lovely fella, genuinely, stood there chatting for twenty minutes while I was trying to pack down. I was feeling generous, the sun was out, I said I'd do it for €180 framed and he near bit my hand off. Anyway. Carving took me the guts of three days. Proofing, a couple of plates I wasn't happy with and started again. The frame was €45 alone because the cheap ones looked like muck. Felt matting, the board, ink, the blades I went through. Add it up and I reckon I made somewhere around €9 an hour on the carve itself, and that's before you count the drive to the framing shop and back twice because I measured wrong the first time. And the man's mother cried when she saw it, apparently. Which is lovely. It genuinely is. But I've been doing this twenty years and I still price from the gut instead of the shop floor and I'm raging at myself about it. €9 an hour for work that's better than that. Where's the line between the joy of a person loving your thing and you just being a cheap date? Asking for a friend. Actually no, asking for me, because I clearly can't be trusted with the arithmetic.

Painted a still life tonight at the kitchen table after the kids went down. Same table we ate spaghetti at two hours earlier. I wiped it down, laid out the drop cloth, and there's still a smear of tomato sauce on the corner of my reference photo that I just decided to live with. I used to feel bad about not having a real studio space. Read all these posts about people's dedicated rooms with north light and proper easels and I'd get all wistful. But honestly the kitchen table works. The light is awful. The cat walks across my palette at least twice a session. My 8 year old stuck a drawing of a dinosaur to the easel I can't even use because there's no room for it. But it's the only uninterrupted hour I get and I'll take it. Finished a decent little pear study tonight, better than my last one. That's the whole win. Packed it up and now I'm eating leftover spaghetti over the sink like a civilized person. Who else is painting on a dining room table or a folding tray or wherever they can grab space?

I keep going round in circles on this. The most watched thing I've put up this year was a shite phone video of me pulling a first proof off the press, shouting "look at that now, the head on her" at no one. Four hundred thousand views, sure. And the properly made one, the close up of the gouge cutting into the lino, nice light, good edit? Two hundred odd and mostly my mother. Not complaining, it paid for ink. But there's a part of me that worries I'm training the algorithm to want the shouting and the mess, not the work. Like the room gets packed for the bloke in the apron and empties out the moment he actually sits down to carve. I don't know what the answer is. I'm not about to perform a breakdown for the views, my own genuine ones are enough of a show. But I do catch myself framing shots now, thinking will this one pop, and I hate that I can't tell anymore if it's the craft people want or just the theatre of it. Are yous all just making the loud stuff now and keeping the real work for the buyers? Or have you found a way to make the quiet post land too?

okay so today at the market this guy stood in front of my booth for like ten minutes, studied everything, asked thoughtful questions about the pigment load and the cold press paper, I'm thinking oh nice, a real one. And then he goes "so can I just take a photo of this one instead of buying it? my phone does great in low light" and I laughed because I genuinely thought he was joking. he was not joking. he pulled out his phone and everything. I had to physically step between him and the painting like a bodyguard. That's my job now. I'm a bouncer for a watercolor of a window I've painted forty times. the weird thing is I get wanting the image. I take photos of art at museums all the time. but there was something so... confident about it? like the physical object, the hours of layering washes, the brush I had to rewet and rework because the sky went muddy and I nearly threw it out the window, none of that registered as worth anything. he just wanted the jpeg for free. anyway he left without buying anything and I did NOT cry but I did pack up twenty minutes early and eat a sad croissant. just needed to say it out loud to people who get it.

made a little lidded jar last month, hand-built, glaze came out this weird deep green with these red speckles I didn't plan at all. I was so proud of it I almost didn't list it. Kept it on the studio shelf for two weeks just walking past it. then some stranger on instagram messaged me about it and I panicked and said it wasn't for sale. told myself it was a "study piece" which was a lie, it was just mine. anyway she asked again like a week later, real nice about it, and I caved. packed it myself, bubble wrap and all, wrote a stupid little note in spanish that she'll probably google. it left yesterday. still feeling weird about it. but also it's the first time the money felt like a yes and not a compromise. like okay, this is real, people want the thing my hands made. my abuela would've cried. I just texted her a photo of the empty shelf spot instead. she sent back a string of heart emojis and "mi artista." that's it. just wanted to say it somewhere people get it.

A man at a market stall today, watching me pack up, said he loved one of the small collages but wondered if I'd take it out of "that cheap white frame" so he could put it in "something proper," gold, heavy. He meant well. That's the thing, they always mean well. I charge the work, not the frame. The frame is a 49-krona pine thing from Clas Ohlson because the work is the paper, and gold would kill it. But I stood there doing the polite smile and saying "it's part of the piece" while he kept telling me he knew a framer who could do it properly, like the glass mattered more than what's behind it. Didn't tell him most of my work isn't even framed. It's pinned. The paper breathes. Anyway. Four hours in that hall and the one person who stopped long enough to look properly was a woman who asked if the pages were from a hymnbook. They were. She got it. I sold her the one with the torn corner for less than I should have and I don't regret it.