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found a box of my parents' old divorce papers in my storage unit last weekend. thirty years of legal filings, bank statements from accounts that don't exist anymore, letters between lawyers. almost threw it out. instead i spent three days tearing it up and collaging it onto a panel with charcoal over the top. felt gross at first, like i was violating something. then i realized those papers were already dead. the marriage was dead, the money long gone. i'm just making something honest out of the paperwork of it all. nobody's seen it yet. not sure i want anyone to, actually. but it's the most alive i've felt in the studio in months. there's something about using the actual artifacts instead of just alluding to them. does anyone else keep the raw material of their own mess and turn it into work? or is that just me being morbid

Did a portrait for a friend's parents' anniversary. They're lovely people, I've known them since I was a kid, so I said 300 zloty and waved off the rest. It took me eleven sittings' worth of work across two weeks and I kept redoing the mother's eyes until I got them right. The friend was happy, the parents were happy, nobody complained once. And I still spent the whole time feeling like I owed them an apology for taking their money at all. 300 zloty for that much work is brutal if you do the arithmetic, which I did, standing in my kitchen at midnight like an idiot. The weird part is my friend's husband actually does photography and charges proper money for it. Nobody thinks twice about his rates. But I hand someone a portrait I sweated over and I want to refund them for being inconvenienced.

Someone at my daughter's soccer game asked if I could paint her parents' old farmhouse from a photo, before they sell it. I almost said no. I don't usually do buildings, all those straight lines are brutal, and commissions make me nervous because you can't just walk away when it's not working. But I said yes and I'm so glad I did. The photo was from the 80s, kind of faded, and there was this one big maple in the front yard that's gone now. I spent three evenings on that tree alone because it deserved to be the star of the painting. Dropped it off yesterday and the daughter cried when she opened it. Her mom hugged me and I could tell she was holding it together. I charged $250 which I thought was too much and honestly now I think it wasn't enough. First time a painting actually paid for a full tank of gas plus groceries. Maybe I should take more of these on even if the straight lines scare me.

Ok so back in maybe March my mom's friend Carol asked if I'd do a little watercolor of her parents' old farmhouse, the one they sold in like 2004, and I said sure thinking it'd take me a weekend. It took eleven days. Not because it was hard exactly but because I kept redoing the roof shingles and then the tree line behind it and then the sky, which I painted four separate times and none of them were right and one of them was genuinely bad. I charged her $150. I don't even know why, she didn't ask for a discount, I just heard myself say it out loud on the phone and then couldn't walk it back. Eleven days. My Arches paper alone is like $6 a sheet and I went through five because of the sky situation. And the thing is she cried when I gave it to her, like actually cried at her kitchen table, so part of me is like, ok, that's worth something, that's not nothing. But I also sat in my car afterward doing the math on my phone and felt sick. I'm not even asking what I should have charged, I know what I should have charged. I think I'm asking how you stop doing this. Because I have another one of these coming, my aunt already asked, and I can feel myself about to say a number that's too low just to make the silence stop.

There's a small 8x10 landscape sitting on my dining table right now, one of the ones I did of the creek behind my parents' place, and I've been sitting on it for three weeks because I don't know what to put on the tag. I sold two pieces at the fall fair. The 16x20s went at $150, which felt fine, honestly, that's what I've always done. But the small ones I let go for $45 and I knew while the words were coming out of my mouth that it was wrong. My husband did the math on the last one. Twelve hours, plus the frame which was $18 at the craft store, plus gas to the fair, and I made less than I would have covering a shift. And I still said $45 because I didn't want the lady to wince. The thing is, I'm not in this to get rich. I have a day job, this is my thing. But $45 for a finished painting with a frame is not a bargain, it's me practicing saying no badly. I'm going to write $65 on this one. That's the whole plan. It sounds so small written out. But I've been standing in my kitchen practicing the sentence in case someone asks why, like I need a reason prepared.

A friend from the parents at my daughter's school. She knows I paint. She asked me to do a portrait of her daughter, a nice photo reference she had, the girl in a garden, good light actually. I said yes, I'd be happy to, and told her my price for a bust-length oil on linen, 40 x 50 cm, which is 1 200 €. She paused and said: "But you'll enjoy doing it." Not in a nasty way. She genuinely thought that because I would like the work, it shouldn't cost as much. As if pleasure and payment are opposites. As if a baker shouldn't charge for bread because he likes to bake. I explained that enjoying my work doesn't mean my time and materials are free, and that the years I spent learning to paint a child's face well enough that she'd want to hang it are part of what she's paying for. She said she'd think about it. She hasn't replied. I don't blame her exactly. Nobody taught her what this costs. But I'm tired of explaining that my enjoyment of the work doesn't subtract from the price, it's the whole reason the work is any good in the first place.

ok so this is a commission, a small one, 9x12, a view of their parents' porch, and I sent the scan and they said "love it, could the sky be a bit bluer?" and I said sure! no problem! and then opened the file and just sat there. because there is no blue in that sky. it's payne's grey and a wash of raw umber and honestly it's the best sky I've painted all year, it's that flat pre-storm look, and "bluer" means french ultramarine and now it's going to look like a birthday card. and the thing is they're not wrong, it's their house, they're paying me, they can want a bluer sky. I just have to figure out how to do it without the whole thing going dead and I keep mixing test swatches on the back of an envelope like that's going to solve it. it's 40 minutes of my life. the envelope is full. I think I'm going to do like a quarter of a drop of cerulean. barely anything. and then tell myself it's bluer.

my sister-in-law's friend asked me months ago if I could paint her parents' lake cabin for their anniversary. I kept putting it off because the pressure of doing something for someone else, someone paying me, felt so much heavier than painting for myself. finally got it done this week and mailed it out this morning. I'm not sure how it landed honestly. I kept second guessing the colors, the angle I chose, whether it even looked like the place. but it's gone now so it's out of my hands. she paid me $200 which felt like both a lot and not nearly enough at the same time. told myself I'd use it to buy better brushes but I'll probably just spend it on the kids 😅 anyone else get weirdly nervous about commissions or is it just me

My parents put their house on the market last week. The one in Malleswaram where I spent 26 years. My room, the jasmine creeper over the gate, the terrace where Amma used to dry mango pickle in summer. Someone's going to tear it down and put up an apartment block, I'm sure of it. I've been putting off painting it for months. Too close, too much pressure, too many feelings. But yesterday I just sat on the floor of my old room with my sketchbook and did it. Watercolour and ink, the way it looked in the late afternoon when the light slants through the neem tree outside. Cried a little while painting. Then laughed at myself for crying. My husband found me like that and just handed me a cup of chai and walked away, the man knows when not to say anything. It's not my best work technically. But it's the most honest thing I've done in a while. I don't know if I'll frame it or stash it away. Just needed to put it down somewhere before it's gone.

ok so I need to say this out loud to people who'll get it. back in like February a friend of a friend asked me to paint her parents' house, small thing, gouache, maybe 9x12, and I said 180 euros because she was nice and I panicked and it felt rude to go higher for something that "small." eleven hours. eleven. and honestly probably more if I count the two evenings I just sat and stared at the roof line because the perspective was fighting me. so that's what, 16 euros an hour, and that's before the paper and the paint I burned through redoing the sky three times. my partner did the math out loud in the kitchen and I genuinely wanted to leave the room. the worst part is it's a lovely painting now and I'm proud of it and she cried a little when I dropped it off, and I still can't figure out how to feel about that. like the crying was worth something but it doesn't pay my rent and I can't take it to the shop. I think the actual thing I'm working on is that I price by how bad I feel asking, not by the work. which is a terrible system. my old teacher used to say price the thing you'd be happy to do it again for and I keep not doing that. anyway I've got two more of these little house commissions sitting in my inbox and I'm seriously considering going back and saying I quoted wrong, which feels mortifying. has anyone actually done that and survived it

A college friend asked me to paint her parents' house in Malleswaram before they sell it. Old tile roof, that green gate, the whole thing. I said four thousand. In my head I was being generous because we go back eighteen years and she's been kind to me. It took me four sittings on location plus two days finishing at home. Paper, the travel, the auto fares, and I redid the roof twice because the light changed and I got stubborn about it. Last week I was at a group show and a painter I know, roughly my level, nothing fancy, was quoting eighteen thousand for the same size house portrait. Same paper. Same city. Same kind of work. I'm not angry at her. I'm angry that I did the sum in my head as "what would she be comfortable paying" and not "what is this worth." Thirty-odd hours of my life went into that painting and I priced it like a favour, which it wasn't, because a favour is something you give free. The thing is I have three more enquiries waiting and I don't know if I can say twelve thousand out loud without my voice doing something strange. That number feels made up. It isn't, obviously. It's just that I've been undercharging for so long that the correct price sounds like a lie.

I sent work to a small gallery in Gothenburg years ago with no idea what "consignment" even meant. I signed the paperwork without reading it properly and spent the whole opening night hovering near my pieces like a nervous parent. Nobody told me I'd spend most of the night talking about process instead of looking at the work. What do you wish someone had told you before your first showing? The practical stuff especially, the stuff nobody puts in the contract.

I've been working without a clock all week. Cyanotype needs sun and it needs a certain patience, and I got tired of crouching over the prints with my phone in my hand like some kind of anxious parent. So I just put three pieces out this morning and left them. Went back to the kitchen, made coffee, forgot about them properly. One came out almost white, the clouds had moved in and I'd missed it. Another one went so dark the seaweed disappeared into the blue entirely. But the third one, that one had been out during the exact hour the light was right, and it's the best thing I've made in a month. The paper knew better than my timer did. My grandmother used to say the tide waits for no one, but the sun is more forgiving. It comes back tomorrow. Not sure I'm going back to the stopwatch. Worth losing a few prints for the ones that actually listen.

Someone asked me to paint their parents' kitchen. Not a portrait, not a landscape, just the kitchen where they grew up. I almost said no. Kitchens are hard, all those surfaces, chrome, the light fights you. And the reference photo they sent was terrible, taken on a phone in the evening, everything yellow. But they wrote me a long email about their mother cooking in that room, about the afternoon light coming through the little window, and I caved. I should trust that instinct more often. What saved me was that I ended up painting it almost from memory of what a kitchen like that feels like. The photo was only a scaffold. I moved the light around, made it morning, put a bowl of apricots on the counter that wasn't in the photograph at all. She cried when she picked it up. Her husband filmed her. There is a video of a grown woman crying over a painting of her mother's kitchen and it is the most honest thing I've seen in months. I kept the bowl of apricots in. She said her mother always had fruit out. I keep thinking about what I almost said no to.

opened a fresh tube of liquitex heavy body cadmium red this morning and the first squeeze was just... clear medium. had to massage it for a full minute before any pigment came out and even then it's grainy. never had this with them before. is this just a bad batch or has something changed over there? i know they got bought by that parent company a while back. genuinely pissed because this is the red i mix everything into and i'm supposed to be shipping these this week.