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Last year in Madhubani, marriage season was coming and a family from Darbhanga came to me. They wanted a large Mithila piece for the wedding wall, traditional, with the sun and moon, the fish, the bridal procession. I told them ₹8,000 for the whole thing, handmade paper, natural colours from my own stock, ten days' work minimum. They said they would think about it. Next week I heard they went to a younger fellow in the next lane. He does the work too, learned from his aunt, but he charges ₹4,000. He uses poster colour, not geru and rice paste. And the paper is machine-made. But it is half my price, so they went to him. I am not angry at the boy. He is feeding his family. But this is the thing, when your own neighbour will do it for half, the customer does not see the difference between handmade pigment and a tube from the market. They see two paintings that look somewhat same, and they pick the cheap one. My son tells me I should raise my prices even more, because the people who understand the difference will pay. But the people who understand the difference are fewer every year. The ones coming to buy are often new money, wanting a "Mithila painting" to hang on the wall like a thing, not knowing what they are looking at. So I am stuck. ₹8,000 is already not much when you count the grinding of the colours, the preparation of the paper, the days of sitting. But I cannot compete with ₹4,000 and poster colour. And I don't want to compete that way either. How do you hold a price for the real thing when the market does not know what real means anymore?

Did the accounts for the last market season over a cup of tea this morning, the way you do, and I nearly spat it out. Sold 240 prints over eight Saturdays, which sounds great till you add up the fine: about €4,600 in, and then the stall fee, the petrol, the framing offcuts, the lino and ink and paper and the new gouges I had to buy because the old ones went blunt halfway through July. Net came out around €900 for the season. That's not a business, that's a very slow hobby with a stronger opinion of itself. But here's the thing I keep coming back to. I met a woman at the October market who bought one print of the heron and then came back the next Saturday with her daughter and bought another one the same, "one for each of them" she said. That's not in the accounts. And I sold one to an American lad who sent me a photo of it framed above his fireplace in Chicago, which is mad when you think the lino block it came from has a coffee ring on it from the Tuesday before. I know the whole thing should be priced better and I know the answer is I'm a coward with my own numbers. But I also know I'd still do the eight Saturdays for less than minimum wage, and I'm not sure whether to be proud of that or embarrassed by it. Maybe both. Anyone else ever run the numbers and then decided not to learn anything from them? 🙂

Every time I sit down to a fresh sheet, handmade paper, the one I like from the Srikrishna batch we got last year, I tell myself I will do something new this time. A different composition. Maybe the wedding scene I have been thinking about since my niece's marriage last month. But my hand, it goes to the dhaan. The paddy stalks. That old motif curving from the corner, the grains full and heavy, dropping toward the bottom edge. My mother used to say it is not decoration, it is a prayer, for the land, for the stomach, for the season coming right. I put it in even when the painting is about Durga or the fish or the tree of life. Sometimes I hide it small behind a border so only the person who looks carefully will see it. My grandmother told me once: if you paint the dhaan enough times, the goddess will recognise your hand and bless your harvest. I was a boy then, I thought she meant the rice harvest. Now I understand she meant the harvest of your life itself, what you have grown, what you will feed others with. So today again, starting a new piece for an exhibition in Patna next month. And there it is. The paddy stalks already. I did not even decide. They just came. 🙏

Mine did the slow fade over about seven months. Studio visit, then "we're very interested," then a group show that kept getting pushed back a season, then pushed back again, then nothing. I finally emailed to ask and got a reply that started with "unfortunately." I keep wondering if I cut it too early or hung on too long. What's the longest you've been left hanging, and how did you know when to walk?

Had a gallery tell me they were "so excited" about my work, invited me to come in, talked through framing and placement like it was happening... then went silent for eight months. I emailed four times, got one "let's circle back" and then nothing. Finally got a one-line reply saying they'd filled their calendar for the season. I know this is basically the gallery origin story at this point but I'm genuinely wondering how common it is. Did you ever chase one that turned out to be a total waste of your time? Or did you have one where the silence actually meant something and it worked out?

i emailed a gallery back in february. they replied in march saying they were "reviewing my work with the curatorial committee." i followed up in may, still reviewing. july came, i followed up again, got "we'll circle back after summer programming." then in september i get a polite no. like, just say no in march? don't drag me through all the seasons? tell me your longest string-along. not the rejection that stung, the one that wasted your time.

Raised my prices two months ago. Not by much, from 350 to 450 for a portrait. I had this whole spreadsheet argument with myself about it. The logic was fine. Someone actually bought one at the new price last week and I still felt guilty about it, like I'd overcharged a friend. But here's the thing nobody warns you about. The silence. Before, I'd post a finished portrait and get the usual little hum of interest. Now I post the same quality work and it's just... quiet. I know it's partly the season and partly the algorithm being moody. But I can't shake the feeling that the quiet is people deciding 450 is too much. The other part of me, the part I'm trying to trust more, says it's just that higher prices filter out the people who were never going to pay anyway. One buyer who treats it as a real purchase beats ten people who say "oh I love your work" and mean it as a compliment to themselves. I don't know. I keep going back and forth. Any of you who've raised prices and sat through that quiet stretch before it paid off, tell me it got better. Or tell me you dropped back down and it was the right call. I need someone else's spreadsheet.

I got to thinking about my grandmother's feed sack quilts the other day. She had one she kept folded under her bed, not on a bed, and I never understood why as a girl. Now I know she was keeping it for the hard days. Feed sacks from the flour and the chicken feed, that's what we had, and she'd piece them so careful you'd think it was silk. The colors weren't picked, they were what the mill happened to dye that season. But she made them sing anyway. I hold onto a little piece of one of hers. Just a square, faded almost white now. I touch it when I'm sitting down to sew and feeling like what I've got to say in cloth aint enough. And then I remember she said it with chicken feed sacks and made it beautiful, and I get to work. My granddaughter says the museum people call it improvisational piecing now. I call it making do and making it pretty. Same thing, honey. Same thing.

Mine was fourteen months. I sent a proper letter and a small printed portfolio to a gallery I had admired for years, heard nothing, sent a second one the following season, and eventually got a note back asking to see the work in person. The show came nearly a year after that. I have since learned that this is not unusual, but at the time I was convinced I had done something wrong. So I would like to know: what was the gap between your first contact with a gallery and the first time they said yes? Not the whole courtship, just the honest stretch of time. I am partly asking because I suspect the numbers are far longer than anyone admits publicly, and partly because I would like to know whether anyone has had it happen quickly and whether that turned out to be a good thing.

Mine: a small space in the 6th that wanted 60% and asked me to "adapt my palette to the season" for their clients. I said no thanks, and the woman seemed genuinely surprised. Another one kept me waiting forty minutes while he took a personal call, then explained commission to me like I was a student. So tell me the one that made you walk. Not the ones that just ghost you, the ones where you were in the room and something smelled wrong and you were right. I'm asking partly to feel less alone and partly because I have a meeting next week and I want my antennae up. What did you ignore that you should not have ignored?

Fifteen by twenty-two centimeters. A corner of a room, morning light on a folded tablecloth, a copper pot, half a chair. Two days under the paint, maybe three with the varnish drying. I quoted 1 900 euros in September and I've been sitting on the price list since, not sending the new one. The number I want is 2 700. Same painting, same size, forty percent more. Nothing changed except that I finally did the arithmetic properly: materials, the linen, the ground, the week I lose afterward not painting because my head is still in that room. And a gallery in the sixth wants four of these for spring. Four at 1 900 is 7 600 for a season of work, before they take their cut. I know what the answer is. I know a woman in Villeurbanne who charges 3 200 for this size and sleeps fine. But I've written the email four times and deleted it four times, and there is a version of me that would rather paint it at 1 900 and complain than send it. My wife says the price is not the problem, the asking is. She is usually right and it is very annoying. I'll send it Monday. Writing it here so I have to.

Had a piece out in the weather since 2019, a tall steel form on a corporate plaza downtown. I welded it with a guy half my age helping me, and I argued with myself the whole way about one joint near the base. Wind load, thermal movement, all of it. I knew better. Did it anyway because the schedule said so. Went by there today to check on something else and stood under it for a while. That joint is clean. No cracking, no rust bleeding through the seam where I was sure it would go. Thirteen years on steel and I still don't trust a good weld until the weather has had a few seasons at it. Checked every connection while I was there. All of them fine. Thought about telling the young guy who helped me but I dont know if hes even still fabricating. Some people move on from this work. Just nice to be wrong about a thing once in a while.

What's the most unprofessional thing a gallery has done to you, after they already took your work? I'll go first. A gallery in another city confirmed a solo show, dates locked, contract signed. Two months before, I emailed to check in about shipping logistics. Nothing. A week later, nothing. I finally got someone on the phone and they said, I swear, "oh, we decided to push you to next season." No call, no email, nothing. I found out because I called them. The show never happened. They just... stopped answering. I know we all have one. What's yours?

okay so I know this is such a specific complaint but I have been fighting for my life with my gouache the last few weeks because it's finally warm here and the drying time is just… different?? Like I'll lay down a wash and it's practically dry before I can even blend into it, and then other times it stays tacky forever and picks up the layer underneath. I feel like I'm relearning my own medium every June. I've been working on this little street scene from a photo I took on my phone last fall, just a corner bodega with that orange awning you see everywhere in Brooklyn, and the sky went from a smooth gradient to a streaky mess in about 90 seconds because I hesitated. Had to let it fully dry and go back in with a damp brush to finesse it and honestly it's fine now but I was so mad in the moment lol. Do you guys adjust anything when the seasons shift or do you just suffer? I keep telling myself I'll figure it out by August and then August comes and I'm equally confused.

I keep a running list of the ones that sound like a yes but aren't. current champion: "this isn't the right fit for the program, but please keep us in mind." keep you in mind, cool, for what. second place goes to any variation of "we're full through next year." said in march. in march. my own worst was a small space that asked me to send a "short proposal" and then a second one and then a floor plan, and then went quiet for five months before a group email about their new season. I sent a follow up, got "so sorry, buried!" and never heard another word. what's the line that keeps getting you? and has anyone actually had one of those turn into a real show later, or is it always just a soft no with extra steps.

This is the thing that sits in my stomach and I am saying it here because who else will understand it. Last season I made two Kohbar paintings of the same size, same handmade paper, same natural colours, same two weeks of work. The one sold in Patna through the cooperative for 4,000 rupees. The other went to a gallery in Delhi and the buyer paid 32,000. Out of that, the gallery kept a big portion and I got somewhat more than Patna rate, but the buyer's price was 32,000. Same painting, same hands. Only the city was different. People say, Ramesh ji, then send everything to Delhi. But the Delhi wala takes his cut, and he wants a name, a story, photographs, a certificate, in English. Also he wants it fast and in bulk, which is not how this work goes. And the Patna buyer is my own people. How to tell them the price is double now? They will say I have become greedy after going online. So I keep two rates and it does not sit well with me. My son says this is normal business. Perhaps. But my mother would have sold one painting, taken what was fair, and not thought about Delhi at all. Any of you who sell in your own town and also outside, how you are managing this? Or you have also just accepted two prices and kept quiet about it.

I almost ruined a figure study yesterday because I couldn't leave the studio. The light was going, I knew it was going, and I kept poking at the edges anyway. Ten more minutes of that and I'd have repainted a perfectly fine passage into mud. It took me years to learn this and I still do it. There's a moment where the painting tells you it's done for the day and if you don't get up then, you pay for it the next morning with a wet rag and regret. Right now I have a rule of sorts: when I start adjusting things just to have something to do, when my hand makes a mark and I think hm, before I make it, that's the signal. Put the brush down. Walk out. Of course I had to ruin the shoulder of that figure to remember my own rule. Three hours yesterday, then an hour today scraping and restating what the light had already given me for free. Bof. Some lessons you re-learn every season.

had a gallery "really excited" about my work for almost eight months. kept saying we're putting together a show for next season, hang tight. never happened. i finally just stopped emailing them and walked away. still not sure if i gave up too early or way too late. what's the longest a gallery ever kept you dangling? and at what point did you cut it loose?

A visitor from Germany came to our village last month through a cooperative tie-up. She saw the fish and the peacock panel I had done for the wedding season, and she asked the price. I told her twelve thousand rupees. She did not bargain, ji. She simply took out the money and paid me twenty-two thousand because she said my work was worth more than I was asking. That very night I could not sleep properly. Not because I was happy. Because I kept thinking, for thirty-five years my mother sold the same size of painting through the local haat for eight hundred rupees, and it was good money then. I have never once named a price that came to me naturally. I always think of the market here, where the families cannot pay. So we all keep the art cheap to keep it in the hands of our own people, and the foreign buyers walk away with it for whatever they feel. I am not blaming anybody. But I have started asking myself, am I doing a disservice to my mother's art by pricing it for the ones who cannot pay and not for the ones who clearly can. I have not got an answer yet.

There's a window in my studio, north light, looks out onto the courtyard wall. I've painted it twelve times over the years and I'll paint it again this winter. Same window, same wall. People think this is a lack of imagination. It isn't. It's the opposite. The light behind the courtyard wall changes with the hour and the season and the weather in a way you can't fully hold in your head until you've tried to put it down on canvas and failed. I've failed eleven times. The twelfth was close, so now I'm irritated. My old atelier master used to say a subject isn't finished when you've painted it, it's finished when you've stopped learning from it. I thought that was sentimental at twenty. Now I hang my whole practice on it. Anyway, the light today is doing something particular with the damp on the wall, that grey-green you only get in Lyon in November. I should be at the easel instead of typing this.