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Had a collector ask me last month what a life-size figure in limestone would run. I've danced around it for years, always said "it depends," gave ranges so wide they meant nothing. This time I just told him. 14,000. He didn't blink. I think I could have said 18 and he still wouldn't have blinked. The math is the part nobody sees. A block that size, good French limestone, that's 2,000 plus freight to the studio. Then the roughing-out alone is two to three weeks. I'm not counting my shop rate on that, I'm counting what I'd be paid to do the same labor on someone else's piece. It comes out to about nine dollars an hour once you add the finishing and the patina and the weeks it sits while the stone settles. Nine dollars an hour for a skill it took me thirty years to build. And the guy was ready to pay more. I'm not sure what that says about me or about the market, but it sits wrong. I've been charging what I was afraid to charge, not what the work is worth. Still. Scared to raise it because the last big commission I quoted at 16, the client went somewhere else. Might have been the price. Might not have. But it's in my head now.

Sold a queen-size quilt to a lady from Georgia last month for $450. Three months of evenings at the machine, plus the cotton and batting ran me near $120 before I ever sat down. Do the math on that and it comes out to maybe a dollar and change an hour, and that's before you count the years it took me to get to where I could make it look so easy. What gets me is I've been doing this my whole life and I still catch myself apologizing for the price. She hemmed and hawed a little and I near about talked myself down to $400 before my mouth caught up with me. My grandmother sold quilts off the back porch for whatever somebody'd hand her, and I think that shame stuck to me through her and down to me. I've got one hanging in a gallery right now that they priced at $2,400 and it sold in a week. Same hands made both of them. Same patience. I'm too old to keep acting like that first one was the honest price.

Six canvases. Six. I thought I was saving time, buying them already stretched by people who supposedly know what they're doing. Every single one has a little depression right in the middle, like someone pressed a fist into it before the glue dried. I sized them anyway, hoping it would tighten up. It didn't. Now I've got to either strip them and re-stretch myself or paint around a soft spot for the next three months. I know the answer is "do it yourself." I do. But sometimes you just want to buy a thing and have it be the thing you bought, non? I'm too old to be surprised by this and yet here I am, surprised.

I buy the Arches oil paper in the big pad, the 350gsm. Been using it about four years, always the same. Today I wet a sheet for a thin wash layer and the water just sat on top in beads. It's like they oversized it. I let it dry, tried again, same thing. Had to scrub the surface with a stiff brush to get any tooth back. Anyone else hit this batch? Or is this just what happens when a brand gets big enough to stop caring. I know I should probably just size my own paper and stop complaining. But I liked the convenience and I'm annoyed about it.

A few weeks back I posted the small pieces I keep on hand for the online shop, they went fast. Then a message: "these are lovely, why don't you make them bigger?" Polite, interested. I told them the truth: the small ones are 30 cm by 30, three weeks of work. The big wall pieces I do are two meters, and they take five times as long because every tile gets cut and set by hand, not scaled up like a photograph. The bigger version isn't the same thing enlarged. It's a different animal, and it costs accordingly. Silence. Then: "can you do me one at 60 cm for the same price?" That was the whole conversation. The person thought the price was per square centimeter of artwork, like buying carpet. Not per hour of kneeling on a floor with a hammer and nippers. I get it, nobody knows what anything costs if they've never had to make it. But it did make me wonder how many people think commission pricing is just quantity times a rate, instead of time times skill times the fact that I only have one spine. Just sent the reply that says no, and that I'd be glad to quote what a 60 cm piece actually costs. Curious to see if they come back.

I had a gallery once, small, reputable, right city, who said they liked the work but could I do smaller. The large canvases were too hard to place, they said. I thought about it for about a week, felt like I was selling out, and then I did it. Made a whole batch at 80x100cm, same approach, same treatment. And you know what, it was fine. Some of them I still like. The relationship didn't last anyway, for other reasons. So tell me: what's a compromise you made for a gallery that you don't regret? Or the one you do?

Found a painting of someone's dachshund from 1983 yesterday. Terrible painting. The dog's eyes were looking in two different directions and one ear was floating. Frame was trashed, matting was that pilled velvet stuff. Bought it anyway. Took the painting out, put it in a drawer. I don't know why I do this. I have a stack of bad pet portraits now and no use for them. But throwing someone's dog away felt wrong. Same thing happens with photographs. Estate sales, flea markets. I've got a shoebox full of people I don't know. Vacations they took, birthday parties, a wedding where the groom's face is scratched out. I keep thinking I'll do something with them but mostly they just sit there. Maybe it's just cheaper than therapy. Or a different kind of hoarding.

I did the math on my last edition of 12. Each print took about six hours of actual work, plus plate prep, plus the failed states I pulled before I got the one I kept. I used to price per piece based on time and materials alone, which meant each print was maybe €180 and I was basically paying myself to make work for people to frame and never think about again. Then I flipped it. I priced the edition as a whole, sold the run of 12 at €380 each, and the margin came out to more than my screenprinting gigs pay per week. Same hours, same copper, same ink. The only difference is I stopped pretending the value lives in the labour and started charging for the fact that there are only twelve of something in the world. Feels almost dishonest. Scarcity doing work that my hands should be doing, or that my hands ARE doing and I just refused to name it. Still not sure where the honest line is between "this took me time" and "only a few of these exist and you can't have one unless you pay." But I'm not going back to per-hour pricing either.

I got a commission last year for a new piece at a decent European museum. 12k seemed like real money when I signed. Then I priced the steel, the timber, the electronics for the sound element, the rented van to haul it all, the two assistants I had to pay properly because I'm not an exploitative prick. By the time the thing was built and installed I'd spent about seven and a half. The rest covered four months of my life. I ate it because the work was good and I wanted it to exist and I'll probably do it again. The math never works if you count your own time. You have to not count it. That's the trick. You make art because you're compelled to and you finance it however you can and you pretend the hours don't exist. But sometimes late at night you do the math anyway and it's genuinely funny how bad it is. Like actually funny. I laughed out loud when I worked it out. Younger artists ask me how to price things. I tell them charge more than feels comfortable and then double it. Then I watch them not do that and I understand completely because I also don't do that.

just spent fifteen minutes digging through the cabinet under my sink for a jar lid that fits the one I'm using for brush water. none of them do. now I'm using a cracked ramekin that's definitely going to leak onto my desk at some point today and I just decided I'm fine with that. this is a recurring thing with me. I'll be at the thrift store and see a perfect little container for something but I won't buy it because I'm not sure what it's for yet, then three days later I'm using a yogurt cup with the label still half on. every single time. my whole studio is like this honestly. nothing quite fits or works the way it's supposed to and I've stopped fighting it. the wonky table I have to shim, the shelf that's bowing, the lamp that only stays on if you don't breathe near it. feels like the space adapted to me instead of the other way around.

Was painting a pine stand this afternoon (trying to salvage a canvas I started two months ago and abandoned) and I grabbed a flat brush on a whim instead of my usual tiny round. And wow. One stroke and it actually looked like pine needles. Not a hundred fussy little lines that all run together. Just... one confident sweep that did the job. I've been doing landscapes since I picked painting back up and I never even questioned what I was grabbing. Just assumed smaller = more control = better. Turns out I was making everything twice as hard for no reason. Got me thinking what else I'm doing wrong out of pure habit. Anyone else have one of those "wait, THAT'S how you do it" moments way later than they'd like to admit?

I did a small study commission last month. A single cyclamen specimen, painted from the living plant, the client's grandmother's favourite flower. It was a modest piece, one bloom, well under my usual scale, and I quoted £95 without thinking twice. It took eight hours. Not counting the initial sketches I threw away, and the trip to the garden centre to source a plant close enough to the grandmother's to be honest to the work. I sat down and did the arithmetic afterwards and it came to under £12 an hour, before materials. The paper was good. The paint was good. And I had priced it like the size of the sheet mattered more than the time on it, which is nonsense when you think about it, because a botanical study the size of a postcard can take twice as long as a larger, looser piece. The client was delighted and paid promptly, so I can hardly complain. But I keep thinking about the way I undervalue the small ones precisely because they look unassuming. Nobody sees the hours on a cyclamen. They see a flower on a piece of paper. I have not raised my price for those yet. I will, and it makes me slightly uncomfortable to say so, even here.

I'm weirdly superstitious about this but I started writing a short note to every person who buys something from me. Nothing long, like three sentences on a scrap of the same paper I use in collage work. Thank you, something about why I kept that piece around longer than others, hope it finds its wall. It's been maybe four months now. The thing that's getting me is the replies. People write back. Not always, but often enough that it's shifted something. One woman sent me a photo of the piece hung above her dead mother's armchair. Another guy said he'd been having a shit year and the note made him cry which is intense and also definitely not what I was going for but okay. Here's the part I don't know how to think about: it's not scalable. Obviously. So is this just a thing I do while I'm small and then it dies when I can't keep up? Or is the fact that it can't scale actually the whole point, like the size I'm at right now is the size where this works and maybe I should just stay here? I don't have an answer. Just feels like every time I try to "grow" I make something worse, and every time I do something that feels natural and small it actually works.

A friend from years back messaged me wanting a print for her new apartment. Small thing, maybe A4 size. I said €80 because that's what I used to charge for that size before I stopped selling through galleries. Felt fair between friends. Then I went to buy the paper. Hahnemühle Platinum Rag, because anything cheaper buckles in the saltwater bath and I've learned that lesson the hard way. €22 just for the sheet. The frame I found was simple pine, nothing fancy, €18. Then the glass. Then I had to redo the exposure twice because the light was wrong last week, that's three sheets of paper now, and the third one I messed up the rinse and it came out streaky. I don't know what I think the paper and chemicals and framing should cost. But €80 for a thing that took three afternoons to get right and eats materials the way it does... I think I'm scared to charge what it actually costs because the number sounds too big for something blue on paper. And that's a me problem, not a market problem.

I know you can buy perfectly good pre-stretched canvas. I know this. And sometimes I do, for studies or when I'm traveling. But for the real work I still go to the art supply shop on Rue des Trois-Marie, pick through the rolls of linen by touch, and spend an afternoon cutting and stretching and sizing. My husband thinks it's a ritual I won't let go of. Maybe it is. But there's something about the tension you can only get when you've done it yourself, pulling the pliers until the weave is exactly right, hearing the frame creak a little. And the rabbit skin glue, I know synthetic sizes work fine, but the smell of it cooking takes me straight back to my first year of training. That hideous little kitchen in the atelier where we learned to grind pigment and stretch linen before we were allowed to touch a brush. I had a student last year who asked why I bother. She'd only ever worked on pre-primed cotton. I told her to try it once, just to feel the difference in the surface when you've done it yourself. She never did, I think. But the ones who try it understand immediately. I'm not saying it makes better paintings. But it makes my paintings. That's enough for me.

I finally replaced my steel ruler after 15 years. Same brand, same size, looked identical out of the package. And then I measured a column of paper with both and they're off by almost a millimeter over 40 cm. I kept the old one. It's bent in a way I've learned to compensate for with my eye, so it's actually more accurate in my hands than the straight one will ever be. The new one sits in the drawer, brand new, useless to me. Some tools you don't own. You just get to know them well enough to work around their flaws. That's the real relationship.

Guy messaged me yesterday, real polite, "could I commission something small?" and I was like sure! love that. Then he sent me a paragraph. A full paragraph. He wants a 60x80cm painting (small?? that's huge), of his dog, in a specific palette he described down to the hex codes, framed, delivered, in time for his wife's birthday which is in three weeks. And the kicker, after all that, "obviously I was thinking a few hundred, that's fair right." I did the math on the hours alone and I almost laughed out loud. That's about minimum wage before materials. And he's framed it as this flattering opportunity, like I should be grateful he's picked ME. I told him my rate for that size and timeline and he went quiet. Haven't heard back. Cool. Cool cool cool. I think the thing that gets me is people genuinely don't see the labor. They see watercolor, they think it's quick, it's just water, right? They don't know the paper prep and the masking and the waiting for layers to dry and the redoing the whole wash when it blooms wrong at the last second. My partner watched me spend four hours on an 8 inch square today and was like "babe are you okay" and I was like no but the light on the jug is FINALLY doing what I want. Anyway. If one more person asks me to do it "as a favour" I'm going to paint them a single potato and charge them for the privilege.

I took a commission last month for a clients' wedding invitation suite, pressed flowers, hand-painted, twenty-five pieces. They wanted original watercolor originals, not prints. I quoted $1,800 for the set, which I thought was fair given the detail work and the materials. I sat down yesterday and actually tracked the hours. Sixty-three hours from initial sketches to final washes, not counting the sourcing of the flowers or the trips to the paper store. That comes to roughly $28.50 an hour. Less than I made as a graduate teaching assistant in 2003. The work is beautiful. The client is thrilled. And I cannot figure out where I went wrong in my estimate except that I have never been good at accounting for the invisible labor, the thinking time, the false starts, the week I spent testing paper to get the right sizing for wet-on-wet on a heavily textured surface. I charged for the painting. I forgot to charge for everything that makes the painting possible. I raised my studio rate by 15 percent this morning. It still feels like I'm guessing.

I finally priced a new commission the honest way, hour by hour, and it came out to €9.80 an hour before materials. I'm 44, I've been doing this for almost twenty years, and I'm still making less than the person who serves me coffee. That number sat there on the page and I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. The problem is I price the whole piece, not my time. A seated figure, half-length, oil on linen, maybe 55x46. I know exactly what it takes because I've done it a hundred times. But when I think what the client will reasonably pay for that size, my brain gives me a figure and then I divide by the weeks and suddenly I'm ashamed of myself. I raised it anyway, this time. Charged what the work actually costs. The client paused on the phone, that long silence that means I finally said a number too high, and I almost folded on the spot. Then she said fine, let's go. So now I'm terrified I've priced myself out of the next three, and quietly furious that I ever treated that fear as reasonable.

So I had this small still life sitting at a local craft fair in July, priced at $15 because I kept underselling myself and it was small. Nobody touched it all day. Then on a lark I bumped it to $40 and put it back out at the next fair two weeks later. Gone in the first hour, and two people asked about it after it was gone. I don't know what to make of that. The size and the work didn't change, just the sticker. Everyone talks about pricing psychology like it's a secret, but honestly it feels a little gross to me that the same painting is "worth" more because I asked for more. Then again, I've also got a bin of $15 paintings that don't sell, so maybe I've been telling people they're cheap and they believed me. Anyone else seen this? I'm genuinely not sure if I should just reprice everything I'm sitting on or if I'm reading too much into one sale.