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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?

Been running the same carousel ads for a client since January. Always pulled about a 3.5x ROAS. This past month, it's tanked to 1.8x. Same creative, same targeting, same budget. Tried tweaking the copy, changing the CTA, nothing moves the needle. Feels like platforms are pushing their own commerce features harder, or maybe just squeezing advertisers before a bigger shift. Makes you wonder what the point of building all this inventory is if you can't reliably sell against it.

I've been using the same Saunders Waterford cold-pressed block for years. 300g, the one in the grey wrapper. Bought a new one last week and something's off. The sizing feels different, it's drinking the watercolour wash faster, giving me that rough dry edge I don't want. I went back to an old sheet from the previous block to check, and it's definitely not the same. Could be a bad batch. Could be I'm doing something wrong. But I've been doing this long enough that I trust my hand more than the manufacturer's QA. Anyone else run into this? Or is it just me and I need to adjust.

I've been going back to the studio after dinner lately, when the building is empty and the heating clicks off and it's just me and the overheads. There's no good reason for it. I have normal daytime hours like anyone else. But something happens around eleven that doesn't happen at three in the afternoon, the paintings stop performing for me. They just sit there and I sit there and whatever is actually wrong with them becomes obvious. Last night I scraped back a whole corner I'd been building up for two weeks. Big silver-grey mass I was attached to. Gone in twenty minutes. And I could see immediately: it had been dead weight the whole time. The painting breathed again. I don't know why it takes the middle of the night to see that. Maybe because there's nobody to show it to later.

I got so sick of the game I just stopped. No stories, no posts, nothing. Three weeks of radio silence while I painted in my studio like it was 2015 before I cared what anyone thought. And suddenly people are sliding into my DMs asking if I'm okay, if I'm still making work, can they buy that piece from two years ago?? One person found my website through a blog post I wrote in 2022 and commissioned a portrait. A PORTRAIT. Off a blog I forgot existed. I'm not saying "go silent and they'll come running" because that's another flavor of hustle brain nonsense. But damn. The amount of energy I've burned performing for an algorithm that doesn't care vs just... existing and letting people find me when they need to. I don't know what to do with that information honestly.

I went to this gallery in a different city last year, showed them my portfolio, old Bangalore houses, chai stalls, morning light in a certain neighbourhood. And the gallerist looks at me and goes, "This is lovely, but can you make it look more Indian?" I didn't even know what to say. I paint what I see every day. What does "more Indian" even mean? She wanted bright Bollywood colours and lotuses or something, I think. Anyway I didn't take it further obviously. But it stuck with me, that assumption that your work needs to perform some idea of where you're from, rather than just being honest about what you actually see and paint. Anyone else ever been asked to "look more" like something? Or the opposite, told you're too X and should tone it down? What's the weirdest feedback a gallerist has given you about your identity or subject matter?

I had a big print deadline, 40 editions for a group show in Milan, and I just stopped posting. No stories, no carousels, no polite little "in the studio" clips. Nothing for almost nine weeks. I was sure my engagement would be dead when I came back. Instead I gained followers. Not a lot, but more than I did in the three months before where I was posting twice a week. And the people who messaged me were actual humans I've met or worked with, not the usual ghost likes. I don't know what to make of this. Maybe the algorithm prefers scarcity. Or maybe when you're not performing, the only people who show up are the ones who actually care about the work. Which is a nicer thought but also harder to monetise, so I'm not sure it's useful. Anyone else had the experience of doing less and getting more?

I have been trying for months to make nice reels about Mithila painting. The process, the natural colours, the meaning of the fish and the peacocks. Good lighting, proper background, all arranged. My son helps me with the editing. And these posts, they get some likes, some comments saying "beautiful art ji," but not much more. Then last week my son took a photo of me at six in the morning while I was mixing pigment. I had not even bathed. Old kurta, hands stained with lampblack. The photo is not good, blurry, bad angle. I told him delete it. He said no, let me post. That blurry photo got three inquiries from young women in Patna and one from Delhi who want to learn. They said it looked "real." One said she could see I was actually doing the work, not performing. So now I am thinking, all the effort I put into making things look nice for Instagram, maybe that is the wrong thing. Maybe the people who want this art are looking for something that is not polished. But this is strange for me because in Mithila painting, we spend hours making every line perfect. The whole point is precision. But online, they want the opposite. I am not sure what to do with this information. Keep posting the blurry morning photos or go back to the proper videos? Both feel wrong in different ways.

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?

I spent years doing the thing everyone tells you to do, posting process videos, engaging in DMs, keeping a content calendar. And last month a friend who runs a small gallery in Turin said "why don't you just write to the people you already know?" So I wrote a very plain email. No newsletter platform, no template. Just an email to 47 people, collectors I'd met at openings, old classmates, two professors, that person who bought a print three years ago and seemed to actually care. I said: I have six new etchings, they're about repetition and failure, here are three images, first come. I sold five prints in two days. Five prints to people I already knew. I spent maybe an hour on the email. I had spent three months on Instagram for the same result, maybe less. The thing is I think we're all performing visibility for an algorithm that doesn't buy art, while the people who actually might are just sitting in our phone contacts, bored of our posts too. I'm not saying burn the platform down. But I am saying I sent 47 emails and it worked better than 3 years of showing up for the feed.

I spent years tweaking my website. Better photos, cleaner navigation, more process shots, less process shots, SEO keywords my friend who works in tech kept telling me to use. And I'd get maybe three inquiries a month, usually from students asking about internships I don't offer. Two months ago my domain expired and I just... didn't renew it. Put together a single PDF with recent work, editions, prices in a table, and my email at the bottom. It's ugly. It's just a document. I send it to people who DM me or write. That's it. And somehow this feels more honest? Like the website was performing professionalism for nobody in particular, and the PDF is just me handing someone what they asked for. I've sold more prints in the last eight weeks than in the previous six months of having a proper site. I don't know if this scales or if it only works because I'm a printmaker with edition sizes I can count on one hand. But I'm starting to think the whole "you need a professional web presence" thing was built for a different kind of practice, or maybe a different decade.

So I did this really stupid thing where I spent January keeping a spreadsheet of every like, comment, share, and save on every post I made across Instagram and Bluesky. I thought I'd find a pattern, you know? Something to reverse engineer. What I found is that the posts I spent hours on, proper process videos, well-lit shots of finished work, thoughtful captions, they got practically nothing. Meanwhile a quick phone photo of my pastel box with the caption "messy desk, trying to start" got triple the engagement. One time I posted a timelapse where I accidentally filmed myself sighing and rubbing my face before starting and people went crazy for it. I don't know what to do with this information. I want to be taken seriously as an artist but apparently what works is showing myself being a mess. Is the answer really just... performative struggle? Because I have plenty of that for free, but it feels wrong to lean into it on purpose.

I've noticed a trend lately, or maybe I'm just noticing it now. It feels like the harder we try to engineer 'engagement,' the more people tune out. I spent last week looking at some analytics for a project, trying to get a spike in likes or shares on a particular piece of content. We tweaked the hook, adjusted the CTA, even played with the posting time. Nothing moved the needle much. Then, coincidentally, I posted a photo of my messy studio floor, paint tubes everywhere, a half-finished canvas in the background, with a caption just saying 'Work in progress.' It got more genuine interaction – people asking about the paint, the process – than the polished piece we'd spent days on. It makes you wonder if the 'performance' is the problem, not the content itself. C'est ça, non?

I find myself drawn to the silence more than ever lately. Trying to make something of the small gaps, the places where the usual marketing chatter just… isn't. It's not about ignoring the noise, but about finding the signal in the quiet. My own practice is very much about this – using found paper, old book pages, and leaving a lot of empty space. It’s about what’s not there as much as what is. Wondering if anyone else finds value in intentionally creating that space online, away from the constant performance.

Had a gallery owner come through the studio last month. Walked around for twenty minutes saying almost nothing. Looked at the welds on a piece I'd done three years ago, ran a hand over the stone base, asked me what grit I finished with. I told her 400 by hand, same as always. She nodded and wrote me a check for a show next spring. Ten years ago I would've prepared a statement, cleaned the studio, rehearsed what to say. This time I had grinder dust on my jeans and half a sandwich on the bench. She didn't care. She wanted to see how the work was actually made. I think the whole performance of being an artist is getting in the way for people who can actually make things. You spend so much time trying to look like an artist you forget to just be the one holding the tool.

two months ago i got in my head about "the algorithm" and paid someone $500 for a 90-minute zoom where she told me to: film myself painting (i hate this) use trending audio (i'm 33) post 3x a day (i will simply die) do a "bts" of my sketchbook (it's just bad drawings, that's the whole point) i tried it for a week and felt like i was performing having a personality instead of having one. my engagement went down. i wanted to quit painting. anyway i stopped following her advice and my last post did fine because i just took a picture of a painting i liked and wrote "new one, oil on canvas, 24x36" and that was it. 400 likes which isn't viral or whatever but it's real people who actually like paintings. i think i'd rather have 100 people who like my work than 10,000 who liked a video of me holding a paintbrush to trending audio while making a ~relatable~ face. the math might not math on that but my brain feels better.

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.

For about a year I did the thing everyone says, post the process, tag Lyon, show the easel in the corner of the studio, all that. And it worked, in the sense that the little heart counter went up. Then I realised I was making a kind of content about painting instead of just finishing the painting. So I stopped. I post the work now, dry, no process, no "here's my messy palette." Engagement dropped like a stone. And I don't care because I'm not performing a painter anymore, I'm just painting. The people who actually buy from me found me anyway, through the work itself or through a collector who passed my name along. The rest were just watching. I know the algorithm people will say I'm throwing away exposure. Maybe. But exposure to people who want a show instead of a painting, what is that worth exactly.

It's not even a good corner. There's a radiator, an old chair my daughter doesn't want anymore, a window that faces a wall of the building next door so the light is always indirect and grey. I've done maybe thirty small studies of it, different seasons, different times of day. Nobody would ever hang them. They're not for anything. I think I just need a subject I don't have to perform for. Something that asks nothing of me. When you spend all day trying to make something worthy of being looked at, you start to crave the opposite, a corner of the world you can paint badly and it doesn't matter. My husband thinks I'm avoiding the commission I'm supposed to start. Maybe. But I also think there's something real in these little failures. A kind of intimacy.

I've been sizing panels with the same batch of RSG for two years, same granules, same pot, same process. This morning I open the jar and it hit me, that exact sweet-sour ammonia smell of a horse stable I mucked out one summer when I was fifteen. Can't use it now. Sent myself right back to that concrete floor and the pitchfork and the rain coming in through the roof. I know old glue degrades. But it didn't change texture or tack. Just the smell flipped a switch and now I can't un-smell it. Anyone had a material suddenly become unusable for a reason that has nothing to do with how it performs?