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I did a small interior study for a friend of a friend last month. Small, 40×50, done from a photograph they sent. Nine hours of work including the drawing stage. I charged €90 and I was embarrassed to ask for even that. Here's the part I don't like admitting. I kept my atelier training in materials and glazing, the whole slow method, because I told myself that's what made it a real painting and not just a painted thing. And it did. But it also means my working speed hasn't changed since I was a student. I cannot paint fast and I've never wanted to. So every time I undercharge I'm not just losing money, I'm subsidizing someone's nice wall with hours I'll never get back. The friend-of-a-friend was delighted. Said it looked like a photograph, which nearly made me choke. But that's the thing, right. The people who would value what I actually do are not the people I keep giving the discount to. I raised my teaching rate last year and nobody blinked. I still haven't dared raise my painting prices the same way. €9 an hour before materials. I'd have done better stacking shelves in a supermarket and it would have been more honest about what the work is worth to me.

Sold a large piece last month, 140cm square, oil and cold wax, three weeks of solid days in the studio. €1,400. I did the math after because I couldn't not. Between the good linen, the cold wax, the pigment, the turpentine, and what I'd have paid anyone doing the carpentry on the stretcher frame, materials alone ran close to €380. That's before a single hour of my time. Stack the hours on top and I'm somewhere around €7 an hour for the year of this trade I've been inside since 1992. Then yesterday a woman from the opening asks, very bright, what I'd charge for one of my "quicker, smaller ones." As if the speed is the variable. As if the three weeks is where the cost went. I said the same price per square metre and she laughed like I'd made a joke. She hadn't understood it was the price. I don't know if I'm undercharging or the whole enterprise is just bad math by design. Probably both. I've been afraid to raise prices for four years because the gallery says the market here is what it is, and the market is what it is partly because we all keep saying that to each other.

sold a 12×16 acrylic to a friend of a friend for $75 last month. nine hours on it. do the math, it's brutal, whatever, i've made worse trades. the part that's eating me is not the money. it's that she asked if i could "do something a little more colorful" and i said yes and then went home and repainted the entire thing in the palette i always use. same colors. vibrated my way into the exact same piece i already made. so i undercharged AND i folded on my own taste at the same time. which is the more embarrassing way to lose money? i think it's the second one.

I did the math last night because I couldn't sleep and I think I'm genuinely losing money on every piece I sell. Like a small drawing takes me 4-6 hours minimum, the big ones are 15-20 easy. I use good paper, good charcoal, fixative, all that adds up. $80 for something I spent 8 hours on is $10 an hour. I make more bartending one shift than I do from a whole week of selling work. But here's the thing, I'm terrified to raise them. Every time I think about listing a drawing for $200 I get this voice in my head like who do you think you are. You're self taught. Nobody knows your name. You're not even in a gallery. $200 for a piece of paper from someone's apartment? Please. And then I see artists with less skill (sorry, I said it) charging $500 for stuff that's technically weaker and I get so mad. But also jealous. But also I still won't raise my prices. My therapist says this is about worthiness or whatever and I told her maybe it's just about rent and being realistic lol. But I think about it constantly. Every time I hand over a drawing and take the money I feel a little sick. Anyone else stuck in the "I know I'm undercharging and I can't stop" loop? How do you break it without feeling like a fraud?

ok so I've been undercharging for literally years. selling my little handbuilt cups for €25, small wall pieces for €60, telling myself I can't ask for more because I'm still learning and who am I etc etc. finally just... raised everything. cups at €35 now, wall pieces at €80. I did the math on a single piece the other day, €25 cup, took me about 2 hours from wedging to glaze, plus firing costs, plus the ones that crack or warp in the bisque. I was basically paying myself €6 an hour and pretending that was fine. raised prices on my online shop and at the last market. nobody said a word. same people buying, same compliments. one woman even said "oh that's all?" about a piece I was nervous to price. now I'm mad I didn't do it a year ago. what are we even doing out here, giving away our time for free?

I was so scared to do it. Had this 30x40 oil I'd been sitting on for months, couldn't sell it at $800. I was convinced I was asking too much already, like who do I think I am. Friend basically forced me to relist it at $1150 just to see what would happen. I thought she was insane. It sold in four days. To someone who had scrolled past it at the lower price twice. Now I'm looking at my whole inventory like... was I the problem? Was it always about the price looking too cheap so people assumed it wasn't valuable? Because that's a gut punch. I've been undercharging for YEARS thinking I was being honest about where I'm at, and apparently I was just signaling that my work isn't worth taking seriously. I don't know how to feel about it. Happy for the money obviously. But also pissed at the whole system. And a little embarrassed.

For seven years I billed other people's buildings. Architects send invoices for work that's already done, measured, approved, nothing emotional about it. Today I sent an invoice for my own painting. A small one, a balcony sketch of a house on Sampige Road that's going to be rubble by next monsoon, but someone wanted it enough to pay for it. The whole morning I kept going back and forth on the number. Undercharged myself twice, then sat there embarrassed and corrected it. My husband found me staring at the PDF and just said "send it na." So I did. It's funny because the actual hard part wasn't the painting. It was deciding that my work had a price at all. Architects know exactly what an hour of their time costs. Painters apparently have to relearn it every single time. Anyway. The money barely covers the paints. Doesn't matter. First one's out. Here's to the next few. And to Sampige Road houses getting a little something before they're gone.

the freelance logo job I took to pay rent is due tomorrow and instead I've spent the last three hours sorting my paint tubes by "vibes" which is just code for color families I made up. there's a pile for "weird browns" and a pile for "aggressive greens" and neither of them is helping me finish this logo. the logo is fine. the logo has been fine since Tuesday. I just refuse to close it. anyway the green section of my wall is looking incredible if anyone needs inspiration, absolutely free of charge, unlike my rates which I keep accidentally undercharging.