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Genuinely still annoyed about this. I've an edition of 40 of the hare, the one leaning into the wind with the ears back, black on cream Zerkall. Small, about A5. Hand pulled, all of them a bit different at the edges, which is half the point of the thing. I had it at 35 for the Saturday market in the square, sold nine in an afternoon, felt like a proper printer for once. So I thought right, that's the market telling me something, and I put it at 45 for the next one. Sold one. To my wife's cousin, and I'm fairly sure she was being decent. Same print. Same paper. Same hands. Two weeks apart. And I've gone back and forth on it since like an eejit, wondering was it the rain, was it that the other stall had the coffee, or did I just get the crowd that day and the price had nothing to do with it at all. Head melted. The thing that nags me isn't the money, it's that I still don't know what the print is worth, and I've been doing this long enough that I feel like I should. Forty euro? Fifty? I've a notion that 35 was me pricing it for people I like rather than pricing the work. Anyway I'm back at 35 for the next one because I'd rather shift them than sit looking at a box of hares in the spare room. If anyone else has done the thing where you put the price up and it goes quiet and you can't tell if the price did it or the day did it, I'd love to hear it, because I'm starting to think you can never actually know.

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.

so a friend that owns a coffee place here asked if i'd hang a couple small pieces on the wall by the till. not a show, no hanging fee, no commission beyond whatever i bought in flat whites. i said sure, mostly to get them out of my apartment. one 20x20cm acrylic, one slightly bigger. little handwritten tag next to each, price and my IG handle. that's it. sold three in nine days. not the two on the wall, three, because people asked if i had more in the back and my friend texted me and i drove over with two more. here's the part that bugs me. last year i did an actual group show, framed stuff, printed cards, the whole thing, sold one. this is a wall by a pastry case next to a sign about oat milk. i don't fully know what it means and i'm trying not to build a whole theory about it. maybe framed art in a white room reads as expensive and scary and a small unframed panel next to your coffee reads as a thing a person could own. maybe it's just that people are already in a buying mood when they're buying a croissant. maybe i got lucky. ngl though i'm now walking around town looking at every counter and shelf like a weirdo thinking about where else i could leave a painting. the guy at the hardware store is going to think i'm unwell. anyone else done the non-gallery thing and had it go weirdly better than the gallery thing

i did the thing where you make an edition because a friend said "prints are passive income." 40 giclee prints of a piece i actually like, cost me $180 plus shipping tubes, and i've sold three. two of those were to people i know. here's the part that bugs me. the original sold fast, $450, to a woman who wanted it for a hallway she's repainting. the print, same image, $45, sat. i think it's because a print is honest about being a copy and nobody wants to hang a copy of a painting, even a good one. or maybe my print is just bad, that's also possible. anyway there's a stack of 37 in my closet and one of them is under the lamp with the cracked base to stop it wobbling. i'm not mad about it exactly. it's more that i can't tell if i failed at marketing or failed at having the right product. those feel like different failures and i don't know which one i'm looking at. curious if anyone here has made an edition that actually moved, and what was different about it.

I do a market in Galway most Saturdays, small stall, prints in a rack and a box of seconds, and I've been half hearted about it lately because the online thing is eating the hours and giving back less every month. Last Saturday a woman picked up one of the hare prints and said "I have this already, well I don't, my sister does, it's in her chipper in Kinvara." I'd sold that one two years ago at a different market to a fella who bought it for cash and never gave me a name. Never saw it again. Turns out it's been hanging above the fryers in a chipper in Kinvara for two years, in the steam and the grease, and it's still up there and people are looking at it while they wait for chips. Anyway she bought two more off me, one for herself and one for the sister, because the sister's one was "gone a bit grey at the edges." So the steam did eventually get it. I don't know what the lesson is, if there is one. I spent a fair chunk of last week building a carousel of studio shots with a caption about process and it got 12 likes. A chipper wall in Kinvara sold two prints. I'm not going to go chasing chipper walls, I'm just noting it. Somewhere in the middle of that there's the actual answer to this whole carry on and I keep missing it.

I did a screenprint edition last month, 50 copies, three colours, hand-pulled, on nice 300gsm. Cost me about €450 in materials plus probably 30 hours in the studio. Sold 7 so far at €40 each. That's €280. Even if I sell every last one I'm barely breaking even on materials, let alone labour. And I know the advice. Raise the price. Build a mailing list before you print. Test the market with a preorder. All sensible. But there's something about making the edition first, committing to it, that's the whole point for me. The risk is part of the form. If I only printed what I'd already sold, it'd feel like a different practice entirely. I'm not complaining exactly. More trying to figure out where the line is between doing something for the work's sake and just being bad at the business side. Because I think I'm genuinely bad at the business side. But I also think the people who are good at it sometimes make work that's too safe. Any other printmakers here just accepting they'll lose money on editions because the object matters more than the margin? Or am I deluding myself.

I got a call last week from a woman I didn't know. Said she found my name on a label sewed into an old quilt she bought at a church flea market over in Tuscaloosa. Asked if I wanted it back. I knew exactly which one before she even described it. That blue and yellow improv log cabin I made in '93, right after my youngest left for school. I was so lonesome that year I just sewed and sewed. Sold it for $40 at a craft fair at the county annex, first quilt I ever sold to a stranger. I remember watching the woman walk off with it folded over her arm and thinking I might've made a mistake letting it go. Anyway she mailed it to me and I opened the box and there it was. Still sturdy. Still a little crooked in places. I sat and held it in my lap a good long while before I could do anything else. I don't know what I'm gonna do with it now. Might keep it. Might hang it where I can see it. That quilt been out in the world longer than my own children lived in this house. Lord.

Set up at a local fair this past Saturday and made a dumb mistake. I hung my favorite little still life right at the front of the booth, eye level, where everyone turns the corner. It sold before 10am. Great, right? Except the next 31 paintings just sat there for the rest of the day. The piece that would have pulled people deeper into the booth was gone before the crowd even showed up. I did the math on the way home. Sold one $65 piece and maybe 4 greetings cards. Meanwhile the booth next to me, a jewelry maker, had her whole display set up so there was no single focal point, and she was busy all afternoon. I think I keep treating this like a gallery wall when it's really a storefront. People browse the front, something catches them, they step in, they stay. Next fair I'm putting the good stuff in the middle and keeping the doorway bits simple. Anyone else hit this? Or am I overthinking crowds that mostly want a free mint?

Now I want to tell y'all something and I don't want it to sound like I'm fussing, because I'm not. But I sold a quilt back in March, a full-size, pieced from my late aunt's dresses and a few of my own, and I charged $850 for it. Felt proud handing it over. Felt right. Then last week I got curious and did the arithmetic. Cutting, piecing, quilting by hand, binding. One hundred and nine hours, and that's not counting the two trips to the fabric shop or the night I sat up ripping out a seam I'd done wrong. Comes out to about $7.80 an hour. Less than I made at the phone company thirty years ago. I'm not sorry I sold it. The woman who bought it lost her own mother and she cried when she unfolded it, and that quilt is where it needs to be. But I've been quilting since I was nine years old and I have been undercharging my whole life, and I think part of me believed that if I named a real price folks would decide it wasn't worth it and I'd find out I'd been wrong about all of it. Anyhow. I'm working on a new one now, red and cream and a little off-kilter, and I believe I'm going to put a fair number on it this time. Haven't said the number out loud yet, so don't ask me. 🙂

did the Mercado de Tapinería this weekend, first stall since June. ten pieces out, four sold. which is not good money once you count the stall fee and the hours, and I was in a mood about it sunday night. but the three that didn't sell were the weird ones, the tall vessel with the crooked neck and the two little heads with the glaze dripping down the chin like they're crying. people kept picking them up and putting them back down and one woman stood there for maybe four minutes just holding the crooked one and turning it. yesterday she messaged me: can you make a set of six for a dining table. so the thing I thought was my failure pile turned into the actual work. meanwhile the safe little bowls, the ones I make because they always go, sold in the first hour and I already forget who bought them. I'm not going to pretend I know what to do with that information. I can't pay rent with a commission that lands in November. but I keep thinking I've been building the wrong catalog. anyone else find that the stuff you almost don't bring is the stuff that pulls?

Sat at the market in Ruzafa on Sunday with about thirty pieces and the small bowls were 45. Sold eleven of them. Felt like a great day until I did the actual math in the van. Clay, glaze, two firings, my table fee, the hours. Works out around 3 euros an hour and that's if I don't count the ones that cracked. Which I always don't count. Funny how the cracked ones disappear from the spreadsheet. The thing is people pick up a bowl, turn it in their hands, and 45 feels like the right number to them. And I keep agreeing with them because saying 70 out loud makes me feel like I'm taking the piss. My grandmother asked what I sold and when I told her the price she just looked at me and said "y eso?" and went back to her coffee. She's not wrong. I know the answer is raise the price. I've known it for a year. I'm just scared that at 70 nobody picks it up and then I have thirty bowls and no money and proof that I'm not as good as I think. Which is a stupid reason, I know. But there it is. Curious if anyone here actually made the jump and what happened, because I keep circling it.

So this is a small embarrassing thing that happened last month and I want to know I'm not the only one. I dropped off two paintings at a coffee shop that has local art on the walls (that's my level of "gallery" so far, no shame). One sold. The owner then asked if I had more, "the bigger ones," because a customer wanted something similar. I stood there and completely blanked and said "I'll let you know" and then emailed her three days later with a number I basically made up on the spot. I still don't know if it was too high or too low. So my real question: when a gallery or shop or whoever asks you for a price on a piece you've already sold, do you give them the old number, the next number up, or do you just panic like me? I gave her $180 for a 16x20 and honestly I'm still deciding if that was smart or dumb. Tell me your number too. Curious if I'm wildly off.

I don't know that I'm doing any of this right, so I'll just tell it plain. My granddaughter set me up a shop back in the fall. Said folks would buy my work online. So I put up four pieces, took the pictures on my kitchen table with a dish towel behind them for a background, and then I sat there and waited like a hen on a nest. March I sold one potholder. Five dollars. But here's the thing that's got me thinking. The quilts I post on here, the big ones, the ones I spent a year on? People look but they don't buy, and I understand it, you don't buy a quilt off a phone from a stranger in Alabama. What sold was the little thing. Something small enough to hold in your hand and cheap enough not to think too hard about. Then last month a lady in Seattle bought a quilt. Said she saw it on here and went and found the shop herself. I never once mentioned the shop on my page. Not one time. So I don't know what to make of that. I put the sign out front and nobody came in. I hung the quilt on the line and somebody knocked on the door. Maybe that's just how it works and nobody told me. Or maybe I'm still fooling with it wrong. I'm 63 years old and I've been sewing since I was seven. I know cloth. I do not know this. 🙂

so my tiny solo show opened tonight in a gallery that's basically a hallway, which was fine because I expected maybe 12 people total. 14 pieces sold before I even finished my first glass of wine. which is great obviously. except now the gallery wants a second wave of work for the rest of the month and I have nothing left. I'm not saying I'm cursed but I did just spend two hours staring at blank canvas going "I have no ideas" while my one sold-out painting stares back at me from the wall like a smug little bitch. anyway if anyone needs me I'll be in the studio panic-painting fruit. congrats to me I guess lol

sold a little lidded pot at the market last Sunday for €60. handbuilt, caña color glaze that came out almost exactly how i wanted which basically never happens. woman who bought it posted a photo on instagram, three people messaged me that night asking for "something similar." i quoted them all €75 and they all said yes. which is great obviously. but i keep doing the math and after clay, glaze, two firings, the hours of throwing and trimming and the one lid that warped and had to redo... that €60 piece was maybe €9 an hour. and the €75 ones are gonna be worse because now i'm self-conscious about repeating myself and I'll probably take longer. the thing is the €60 piece got me three sales. if i'd priced it €90 would it have done the same? i genuinely don't know and that's the part that keeps me up. cheap prices get you seen, but you can't live on exposure unless someone else pays your rent. my grandmother keeps telling me to charge more and she's 84 and has never sold a thing in her life, yet somehow she's right. anyone else ever had a "cheap" piece accidentally do more work for you than your best priced one? or am i just bad at this.

Sold a 160 x 200 cm painting last week that I painted in 2019. It had been sitting in storage, first at the gallery, then in my studio, then back at the gallery. Five years. The buyer paid €4,800. The gallery takes 50%, so €2,400 to me. Sounds fine until you add up the materials: the Belgian linen, the oil, the cold wax, the pigments, the panels I had built for the stretcher. That's maybe €350 for a painting that size, depending on how many layers I burned through. Then the storage costs, I pay €180 a month for my studio, plus a separate small unit for older work. That painting took up wall space that could have held newer work. Hard to calculate exactly but it's not nothing. So €2,400 minus €350 materials, minus let's say €150 in storage over five years, minus transport to the gallery twice, minus the opening night I stood around drinking bad wine and making conversation. Per hour of actual labour? I don't even want to know. And this is a good outcome. The painting sold. Many don't. I'm not complaining exactly. I knew what I signed up for. But when students ask me about making a living as an artist I don't know what to tell them anymore. The math has never been worse and the rent has never been higher.

The painting that has hung in the studio since 2019, the one I kept moving from wall to wall because it did not fit anywhere, sold this week. Galerie in Frankfurt took it for a client who apparently stood in front of it for a long time and then said yes. I had already made my peace with keeping it. That is the honest version. Not out of love, more out of resignation. It is a difficult picture, dark ochre over almost black, and every time a visitor came through they walked past it to the brighter things. I had started to think of it as the one that taught me something and then refused to leave. The strange part is that the money is not the win. The win is that I had stopped defending it. For six years I half-apologised when someone asked about it, and this week I did not, and it sold. Naja. Make of that what you like. I am not sure the lesson is one I can repeat on purpose.

The gallery that loved my work but never sold a piece A gallery in my city took me on years ago, warm people, they hung my paintings properly, good light, private views with real collectors in the room. And nothing ever sold. Two years. Not one piece. They kept saying the work was beautiful, serious, exactly what their clients should want. Eventually I asked, gently, who was buying what. It turned out everything that moved was small, abstract, or cheap. My big figurative interiors just sat there looking at everyone. So my question is more of a confession with an ask: when did you figure out that a gallery's taste or enthusiasm has nothing to do with whether they can sell you? And what was the sign you ignored for too long? For me it was the phrase "we love it, give it time." They loved it for two years. My bank account did not.

The gallery that loved my work but never sold a single piece I had two years with a gallery that praised everything I sent them. Beautiful, they said. So refined. Sold nothing. Not one painting. When I finally asked what was wrong, they told me my work was too quiet for their foot traffic. Too quiet. They'd been hanging it in a back room where nobody went. I should have asked where they planned to put the work before I signed. That was mine. Has a gallery ever told you one thing and then quietly shown you it meant another? What's the line you'd never cross again in how a gallery treats your work?

I have a small etching, drypoint on copper, the plate is 10 x 15cm. I printed it in an edition of twelve. Eleven sold over the last month, slowly, one and two at a time, mostly to people I don't know, which is new for me. The whole run is gone except number 1/12, which I never put up for sale. The strange part is that I priced it low on purpose, because I wanted it to move, because I wanted to know if anything I made could just go out into the world and be bought without me explaining it first. And it worked. And I sat with the email confirming the last one and felt almost nothing, and then felt bad about feeling nothing. Eleven people now own the same image. I have printed the exact same thing eleven times by hand, each one slightly different, and none of them are the work in the way I was taught to think about the work. The work is the plate, or the decision, or the edition itself. I don't know. I spent two years in a seminar on exactly this and now I have eleven strangers with a copy and I still can't say it. Anyway. It's the first time I've sold out a run and I don't quite know where to put the feeling, so I am putting it here instead of in my head at 3am.