Search

Took me three weeks to get back into the studio proper after Christmas. You know the way, kids back to school, chest infection going round, the whole place damp and cold and the ink was like treacle. Kept finding reasons to just tidy the bench instead of cutting. Anyway last night I finally pulled a proof of a block I started in November. Big heron, neck curved down, standing in that shallow water you get on the Corrib at low tide. First proof was rank, cut too deep in the wing feathers, lost the line. Had the whole thing sitting there mocking me. Pulled a second proof at half eleven last night with a different black and a lighter touch on the roller. And the missus came down to see what I was at, coffee in hand, looked at it drying on the rack, and said "that's grand now, that's a nice one." For her that's the highest praise you'll get. No fuss. Took herself back up to bed. Sometimes you just need to get through the bad version to find the good one. And a "that's grand" off someone who's seen every failed print you've ever made. That'll do.

There's this moment that happens around proof number twelve where your eye just stops being able to judge anything. You've been looking at the same image for hours, pulling it, adjusting the wiping, pulling it again, and suddenly you have no idea if it's good or bad or if you're getting closer or further away. The print just sits there being a print. I know this is normal. I know you have to walk away, come back tomorrow. But I also know that the best state I ever work in is the one where I've stopped caring what it looks like and I'm just doing the motion. Something else takes over. The small decisions get made without me. That's usually when the print gets interesting, when I'm too tired to be precious about it. I don't have a clean way to end this thought. I'm covered in ink and the proofs are clipped to the line and I'm not going to look at them again until tomorrow morning. That's the ritual, I suppose. Trusting that you'll see clearly in the light of day what you couldn't see at all at midnight.

Three weeks without the press. Sent the bearings off to a fella in Clare who said he'd have them done in a week, took three, sure what's the rush in Clare. I was half-convinced I'd get it back and something else would be wrong with it, or I'd forgotten how to print altogether. Stripped it down, cleaned everything I could reach while I was waiting, found a biscuit wrapper the youngest had posted through the roller gap back in February. Reassembled it this afternoon with a spanner I'd left out in the rain and had to dry off on the Aga. Pulled the first proof an hour ago. An old block, a hare I've carved so many times I could do it in my sleep. And it just... worked. Clean. Even pressure. The ink laid down like it was glad to be there. I stood there staring at it for longer than I'd admit. The missus came in and said "is that it" and I said yeah that's it and she said "grand" and went back to putting the kids to bed. Which is exactly the right amount of fuss. If you've got a tool or a machine or a process that's been sitting broken and you're dreading getting back to it, just get the first one done. The second one's easy after that.

Had this block sitting in the drawer since February. A grey heron I started last winter and just couldn't get right, the line of the neck was off, the wing shape was doing my head in, and I'd carved half of it badly and walked away. Swore at it plenty. Pulled it out this morning because I was between things and the kids were at school and the house was quiet for once. Thought I'd just have a look at it fresh, maybe salvage something. Ended up carving the whole bottom half off and re-cutting it. Re-inked it twice. Third proof came off the press and I just sat there looking at it. It's not perfect, the registration is a bit squint and there's a cut I shouldn't have made, but it's alive in a way it wasn't before. The dog came over and sniffed the ink and sneezed all over the print and honestly that felt right too. Sometimes you just need to walk away and come back when you're not trying so hard.

I realised something yesterday while I was pulling proofs that I already knew but hadn't admitted: the part I love most is the preparation. The drawing on the plate, the aquatint, the biting, the masking. The thinking part. Then I get to the printing and something in me checks out. I rush it. I'm already onto the next idea. I used to think this meant I was lazy or not a "real" printmaker but maybe it's just that my brain likes potential more than completion. The proof is where everything is still possible. Once it's an edition it's just... fixed. Decided. I have about 40 copper plates sitting in a drawer that are etched and ready and I haven't printed. Some from two years ago. I tell myself I'm saving them for the right paper or the right mood but honestly I think I just don't want them to be finished. Anyone else work this way or am I just avoiding the hard part?

I've been carving the same basic composition of a sitting hare for about two years now, on and off. Same pose, same rough size, and every time I think I've got it licked I pull a proof and the head's wrong or the ear's too stiff or the whole thing just sits there on the paper like a stuffed toy. Dead. Anyway I cut a new block last week out of sheer stubbornness, Japanese vinyl this time instead of the battleship grey I usually use, because why not change everything, and I pulled a proof this morning and I swear to God it's the first one that actually breathes. There's a life in the eye that wasn't there before. The line down the flank has the right weight to it. I don't know what I did different, or maybe I know exactly but can't put words on it. Just years of getting it wrong till one day you don't. Anyone else have that one subject or composition you keep coming back at because it won't let you go? The one you're not done with yet.

I'm still thinking about this guy, must be sixty-five, works in oil paint only, big gestural abstracts. He watched me pulling proofs for a day and then at dinner he said it with this real pity in his voice: "It's a shame, because you clearly have the eye, but you're limiting yourself to crafts." I said printmaking has been central to contemporary art since, I don't know, Dürer? And he said Dürer was a painter who also did prints. Like printmaking is just a side thing painters do when they're between ideas. The thing that gets me is the hierarchy. Oil painting = serious. Etching, screenprint, anything that involves a process and a press = decorative. It's so nineteenth century. And I didn't fight him properly because I was tired and my hands hurt from scraping, but I've been composing the argument in my head for three days now. You know when the perfect retort arrives too late?

So there's a new place opened down near the docks, lovely spot, they wanted a big linocut for the main wall, something of Galway Bay, rough sea, the whole bit. I was delighted with myself. Gave them the friends-and-family rate because they're sound and I wanted the work up somewhere people'd see it. €600, I said. Frame included. Generous, I thought. What I didn't do was keep a proper tally of the hours. Carving that thing, it's a big block, 60x40cm, all that water and sky and the little light breaking through, took me the guts of three weeks on and off. Proofing it, pulling the final edition, stretching the paper, framing it myself. Did the maths this morning. Roughly 40 hours all in. That's €15 an hour, and that's before materials, before the frame cost me sixty quid, before the petrol driving it down there. I'm not even angry about it, I'm just looking at the number and thinking, I'd have been better paid stacking shelves. But I'd also have been bored out of my skull, so there you go. Anyway the print looks savage up on the wall. I'll put the price up next time and see do I survive it.

I've been wrestling with this particular copper plate for weeks, trying to get a specific layered aquatint. Every proof was muddy or flat. I was close to just shelving it entirely. Then this morning, after a very careful sugar lift and a bit more nitric acid, it just... worked. The subtle tonal shifts are there. Feels like a small victory against the material itself. Now to pull the edition.

So there's this heron I've been working on for about three weeks. Big fella, landing pose, wings up, the whole bit. Carved the whole thing. Proofed it. And it was just... dead. Technically fine, lines were clean, composition held up, but there was nothing in it. No weight to the landing, no sense of the bird actually coming down onto something. Just a heron-shaped object hovering in space. Stuck it in a drawer. Left it there a full week. Every time I opened the drawer I'd see it and feel a bit sick. Last night I got the block back out, printed it dark to see what I had, and went at it again with the gouges. Cut the whole background away differently. Dropped the waterline lower. Gave the legs some actual bend, some tension. It's a completely different print now, same heron, same block, but there's air around him and he's actually landing somewhere. I don't know why it took me a week to admit the first pass was banjaxed. Pride maybe. Or just not wanting to face another three evenings of carving. But the block didn't punish me for it. That's the mad thing, lino doesn't hold a grudge. You can keep cutting into it till you get it right or till there's nothing left. Anyone else ever finished something, knew it was wrong, and just sat on it for ages before fixing it?

A museum shop in Vienna picked up a small edition of my screenprints for their retail. I was thrilled, museum shop, right, that feels like validation. They paid €150 per print, wholesale. I sold them 20. I did the math yesterday because I was avoiding something else. Each print takes me about four hours from exposure to final trim, not counting the drawing time before that, not counting the screens I burned and then rejected, not counting the test proofs. So €150 for roughly six hours of work per print if I'm being generous about what counts as labour. That's €25 an hour if nothing goes wrong. Something always goes wrong. I'm not saying the museum shop ripped me off. That's just the going rate, they were fine to deal with. But I sat there thinking: I have an MFA, I've been doing this fifteen years, and I'm making €25 an hour selling to an institution that will mark it up to €400 and call it affordable art. And I said yes because I was flattered they asked. I don't know what the right number is. I just know that the gap between what feels good for the ego and what's actually sustainable keeps getting wider and I keep choosing the ego.

submitted to a group show two months ago. paid the entry fee, formatted everything exactly to their specs, sent it off. heard nothing. figured that's how it goes. yesterday i get an email, clearly meant for someone internal, that says "mira's work isn't quite right for the curatorial vision, we're going to pass." fine, whatever. but then at the bottom there's a note from one of them to the other: "did we ever actually open her portfolio? i think the link expired." so they didn't even look. charged me $35 to not open a link. and then had the nerve to accidentally send me the proof. i'm not even mad about the rejection. i'm mad about the $35 and the pretending. just say you picked who you already knew and move on.

i spent like three years trying to do instagram right. good lighting, process videos, consistent posting, the whole algorithm courtship. and it got me... some likes from other artists. nice, but nobody buying. then last winter i was in a total meltdown about a piece that wasn't working. snapped a picture of my studio floor covered in torn scraps and charcoal dust and coffee rings, wrote something like "well this isn't going anywhere" and posted it without thinking. that one post got more replies than anything i'd done that year. two people commissioned work from it. so now i just send the ugly stuff. the failed experiments, the half-finished things i'm unsure about, the mess. i think people want to see the struggle, not the finished product. they want proof you're actually in the trenches, not just curating a highlight reel. my engagement is down by every metric that matters to an algorithm and my actual sales are up. make it make sense.

two open ink tins, one of them definitely crusting over. a proof I pulled yesterday that's fine except the one bit I can't stop staring at. the cat asleep on the only clean bit of newsprint. a coffee mug from three days ago that I'm pretending I'll wash later. and the tune I've been trying to remember for a week is finally in my head now that I'm not trying at all. I spent the whole morning just sharpening tools. that's the whole story. didn't cut a single line. just sat there with the oilstone and the slipstrop and got everything singing. there's something in that, though, the day you spend getting ready is still a day in the work. sure the kids'll be home in two hours and I'll have a hare's head and nothing else to show for it but half a dozen razor-sharp gouges. grand. tomorrow they'll earn their keep.

came into the studio this morning, absolutely Baltic out, and soon as I opened the door that cold linseed oil hit me. the sharp of it. the black of it. there's something about that smell that just says "right, you're home now" and the rest of the world can go hang. my wife says I smell like a garage and a church had a baby. she's not wrong. I've been printing all morning and my hands are a state, got black under every nail and probably on my face too. there's a print proof drying on the rack and I don't know yet if it's any good but the smell alone made it worth showing up. sure that counts for something.

had this piece sitting in my studio for months. a collage i made out of my brother's old road maps and a bunch of receipts from that year everything fell apart. i kept thinking it was a mess, too personal, no composition, just stuff glued down with no distance. almost threw it out twice. took it to a small open studio thing last weekend more to get it out of my sight than anything. put a low price on it so if nobody bought it i wouldn't care. a woman bought it and then emailed me later saying she'd lost her sister two years ago and the piece made her feel less alone in it. she said the receipts looked like proof that someone had actually lived a life, not just a name on a stone. i sat on my kitchen floor and cried for like ten minutes. not sad crying. just. something broke open that i didn't know was still sealed.

There was this gallerist in Leipzig, maybe seven years ago, who saw my student work at an open studio and invited me to bring things by. I was terrified. I had nothing ready, loose proofs, some plates, a notebook full of ideas I hadn't made yet. She looked at it all and said "you're thinking about the right things, come back when you have something to say." Not a rejection exactly, more like a deadline I set for myself. I came back two years later with a real body of work. She took it. And I still think about that, how she saw something before I'd proven it, and said so. Did anyone else have that one early believer? The person who took you seriously before you had any reason to be taken seriously?