Search

The studio has one wall where I can stand back far enough to really look at a thing, and I've had this small interior on it for three days, tilted maybe four degrees off level. Just enough that you'd feel it before you'd name it. Every time I walked past I noticed, then forgot, then noticed again. I wanted to see how long it took for the tilt to become the subject instead of the painting. It took about a day. Then I straightened it and the whole piece read differently, better, the way a room settles when someone opens a window. I don't know what that says about me or about the painting, but there's something in it about how we see. The eye forgives a lot and then very suddenly doesn't. Probably no point to this. I just thought other people here might do the same stupid experiment and tell me what happened.

Had a meeting a few years ago with a space in Berlin that said they loved my work but wanted to "see more range" before they'd commit to a show. Which translated to: could I make something less repetitive, less conceptual, more decorative. Basically could I be someone else. I said no and we both wasted six months anyway. I still wonder if I should have been more flexible. But also, the whole reason I work in print is repetition. The multiple IS the point. So "show range" felt like showing I didn't believe in my own ideas. What's the worst thing a gallery has asked you to change about your work? And did you do it?

My sixteen-year-old came into the studio yesterday without knocking, which she never does, and stood behind me for maybe a full minute while I was working. Then she said, "Maman, your paintings look less sad now." I wanted to be defensive at first. But she's right. I didn't even see it until she said it. For years my palette was all terre verte and raw umber and bone black, everything in that low grey northern light. I think I was painting the inside of my own head without realising it. The fallow years I had, the disappointment, it was all there in the colour, every time. Now there's more warmth. Not bright, not cheerful, just... alive. A little Naples yellow in the shadows. A red glaze where I would have left it dead. Kids see things. She doesn't know about the decade I lost, she only knows what she sees on the easel. And she saw it.

I had a new student in my botanical watercolor class yesterday. She's a pleasant enough woman, retired, looking for a hobby. We were going through the basics of setting up a composition from a live specimen, a simple cyclamen leaf, and she asked, quite earnestly, if she could just take a photograph of it and trace the outline instead. I explained that tracing would defeat the purpose of learning to see, which is rather the whole point of the exercise. She seemed unconvinced. She said it would save time and look neater. I suggested she give it a proper try first, and if she still wanted to trace at the end of class, I would help her. She did not want to trace by the end of class. But the amount of energy I had to spend not saying "you are paying me to teach you to draw, not to show you how to avoid learning to draw" was considerable. I understand that people want shortcuts. I do. Watercolor is difficult and it takes years to develop any real control. But the shortcuts don't actually get you where you want to go. They just leave you dependent on the shortcut. I suppose I am old-fashioned about this. Learning to see, really see, is the skill. Everything else is technique layered on top of that foundation.

I sat with that all evening after I got home. That quilt took me three weeks, hand-pieced, hand-quilted, every scrap of fabric out of my grandmother's scrap bag and some from my own mama's housedresses I'd been saving. $350 is already low if you figure materials and time. But she patted my hand like I was a sweet old lady doing a little hobby. I didn't say anything to her. I smiled and thanked her and wrapped it up nice. But I been thinking, folks see the quilts and they see me and they think "bless her heart" instead of seeing the work. I been doing this since I was seven years old. That's 56 years. You don't get to call that cute. I raised my prices $50 after that. Felt wrong in my chest but I did it anyway. Anybody else have to fight the urge to apologize for what you're worth?

I spent years putting only the final work online. Perfect lighting, good photo, the painting resolved. Crickets, mostly. A few likes from other painters. A few months ago I was frustrated with a figure painting, the hand was wrong for the fourth time, the whole thing looked a mess, and I took a photo of it on the easel with my palette旁边, just to vent to a painter friend. I put it on Instagram almost without thinking. That post got more comments than anything I'd put up in six months. People like to see the struggle. They like to see that you also don't know what you're doing for a while. I think for a long time I thought showing process would somehow diminish the finished work, like revealing the trick. But most people aren't painters. They have no idea what goes into it, and watching something get ugly and then get pulled back out of the ugly, that's the part they actually want to see. I'm still not comfortable with it. I was trained to show only the resolved thing. But I can't argue with the numbers, and more to the point I can't argue with the fact that the conversations are better. People ask real questions instead of just saying "beautiful." Wondering if anyone else has found that the unfinished, uncertain thing gets more traction than the polished final version.

Young guy at the open studio last weekend. Watched me work a piece of limestone for maybe thirty seconds. Then he tells me he could program a CNC router to cut the same shape in twenty minutes and walk away while it ran. I asked him when was the last time he chipped a tooth on a tool grit he didn't see. When he had to look at a piece of stone for three hours before he knew what was in it. When he ruined a week of work because he hit a fissure nobody could see. He said he didn't need to do any of that because the machine did it for him. I'm not against the machines. I've used them for roughing out when it makes sense. But the way he said it, like the whole point was to not be there. Like the work was an inconvenience between him and having something to sell. Twenty minutes. I wanted to hand him the chisel and a block of granite and see how that twenty minutes felt on hour three.

Like, I'll get a video of me just doing a really simple wash technique, something I thought was pretty straightforward and maybe helpful, and it'll get like, 100 views total. Then I'll post a sped-up video of me painting my cat, Bartholomew, looking super derpy, and it blows up to 10k. Bartholomew, of all things! haha. I'm not saying cats aren't great, but it's so hard to tell what the platforms actually want or if they're just messing with us. It makes me wonder if all the effort I put into explaining the pigment mixing or the paper buckling is just… wasted on them? It’s frustrating because I want to share the skill of it, you know? Omg, anyone else feel like they're just throwing paint at a wall and hoping something sticks with the algorithm gods lately?

I had a gallery once that wanted to frame and mount everything before they'd even seen the pieces in person. Insisted on it. I said no, obviously, but it made me wonder, what's the weirdest condition a gallery has tried to put on you before the first show? The thing that made you stop and think, this is not normal.

Opened the studio this weekend for the open studios thing. Nothing special, just a chance for people to wander through. Middle of the afternoon a woman maybe my age comes in with her daughter, maybe twenty. Walks straight to a piece I made three years ago from an old boiler door and some broken factory gearing. Stands there. Then she says to her daughter, very quietly, I wasn't meant to hear, "Look. Someone saved this." That's it. Thats the win. Someone saved it. Not someone made art from it. Someone saved it. I've been thinking about that sentence for three days. She understood the whole thing in four words better than any critic ever has.

Had a gallery reach out to me recently, or rather, someone claiming to scout for one. Seemed excited, asked for my portfolio, then came back with a list of things I should change before they could "consider" showing the work. Make the palette warmer. Fewer buildings, more people. Can I add more "local flavour", their words. I didn't know whether to laugh or be offended. You haven't even seen the work in person and you already want me to be someone else? Anyway I politely declined. But it got me thinking, has anyone else had a gallery approach you and then immediately start asking for changes before they've even taken the work? Where do you draw the line between feedback and them wanting you to fit a mould?

A student brought in a phone photo of her grandmother's kitchen and asked if she could paint from it. I said of course, but that's not the real question. The real question is why she wanted to. She said because the light in that room doesn't exist anymore, the afternoon sun through the window where her grandmother used to stand. So I told her to go find a room with the same kind of light, sit in it, and paint the memory anyway. The photo gives you the facts. It can't give you the hour you were there. We don't paint what we see. We paint what it was like to see it. That's the whole job and nobody teaches it anymore because you can't put it in a curriculum.

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 don't understand these algorithms ji, my son tries to explain but I think it is a different world. For months I was posting reels, using hashtags, doing everything the年轻人 (young people) tell me. And yes some likes come, some comments, but serious order? Hardly. But there is this one WhatsApp group, just a small group of art lovers from Patna and Darbhanga, maybe forty people. One of my old students added me. I share a photo of whatever I am finishing that week, with a price. No editing, no hashtag, sometimes just in the evening with bad light. And from that group only, I have sold maybe twelve paintings in the last two months. One man came all the way from Muzaffarpur after seeing a photo of a fish motif I posted there. The platforms want us to dance for them. But the real thing is just people who already know what they like seeing. I am thinking maybe the old way is best, find your people, even if it is a small group, and show them your work directly. No algorithm needed.

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've been spending so much time on short-form video lately, mainly Reels for Instagram. But I see so many people having huge success on YouTube Shorts and I'm wondering if I should pivot? It feels like a totally different beast. The content that does okay on Reels feels too polished for Shorts sometimes, if that makes sense? Has anyone found a good strategy for both, or do you focus on one platform? My engagement is okay on Reels, but nothing like what I see some people getting on Shorts. Maybe I'm just looking at the wrong creators. It's hard to tell what's real and what's just a lucky spike.

I quoted a client £480 for a study of their garden's camellia. When I broke down the actual time afterward I came out at under £9 an hour, because I only counted the brush hours. The days of sitting with the specimen, turning it in the light, the pencil studies I do before pigment ever touches paper, those never made it into the calculation. Botanical work is slow in a way that doesn't photograph well. A client sees one finished plate. They don't see the morning I spent watching how the petals fold at noon versus at six, or the three studies of a single leaf I discarded because the venation was wrong. I could raise my prices and pretend that accounts for it. I did raise them, modestly, and lost two regulars. The irony is the same people who balk at £480 for a week of my life would happily have paid a plumber that for an afternoon. I haven't decided what that says about me or about the trade I chose. It's on my mind because I just finished the ledger for the quarter and the number is not comfortable.

Picked up a landscape at an estate sale last weekend for $12. Frame was ugly, paint was muddy, but something about the sky felt off, like it was doing more work than it should. Took a scraper to a corner tonight just to see and there's a whole family portrait under it. Three people, dog, someone's hands folded in their lap. I don't know why I'm so moved by it. Somebody painted over their own family. Or somebody else's. Either way they wanted it gone and it wouldn't stay gone. Gonna try to lift the top layer carefully. If I ruin both paintings so be it, but I want to see the faces.

i've been staring at this one collage for six months convinced it was dead. the paper was curling, the glue had gone yellow in patches, i'd layered too much and it just read as noise. nearly threw it out twice. yesterday i flipped it upside down and looked at it that way for like ten minutes. i don't know why that changes things but it does. turned it back and suddenly i could see what it was supposed to be. one piece of tape removed, one charcoal line added, and it just clicked. it's not going in any gallery. nobody will ever see it. but i slept better last night than i have in weeks. sometimes the win is just the thing stops fighting you.

There's this late Byzantine panel from the Church of the Holy Apostles in Thessaloniki, Christ Pantokrator, standard stuff, and I copied it by hand for a conservation module back in 2004. Six weeks on my knees, matching every tessera, and I got it so close my professor kept it as a teaching example. The joke is that piece ruined me. I can't look at a face in mosaic anymore without measuring the eye spacing against that Pantokrator. Last week I finished a portrait commission, contemporary, abstracted, not even trying to be realistic, and I spent an hour staring at it thinking the left eye is two millimeters too far out. Client won't see it. Nobody will see it. But I know it's there because of a dead Byzantine emperor's face I memorized twenty years ago. Anyone else carry a reference piece in their head like a splinter? Something you studied so hard it rewired your eye permanently.