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Most of the questions here are about getting in. I would like to ask about the warning signs. I'll go first, and it is not flattering to me. Fifteen years ago a small gallery took four of my watercolours for a group exhibition. The owner wanted a 50% commission, wanted the frames changed to match his other stock, and asked me to drop my prices "for the room." I told myself it was a learning experience and signed anyway. He sold one, paid me four months late, and used a scan of my Fritillaria on the cover of a brochure for a completely different show without asking. I should have walked at the framing conversation. That was the moment, and I knew it while it was happening. So, the question: what is the earliest red flag you have seen in a gallery, and did you ignore it or walk away? One that turned out fine is just as interesting to me as one that went badly. I would like to know what a warning sign actually looks like from the inside, before the benefit of hindsight. I am not asking anyone to name names, and I would rather you did not. I am asking what the sign was.

I once agreed to show in a space where the "gallery" turned out to be a former butcher shop with one power socket and a landlord who came by to shout about the drains. I said yes anyway, because they said yes first. Show went fine, actually. Drains were a problem. So: what was the warning sign you saw and decided to ignore because somebody finally wanted your work? The too-low ceiling, the dealer who only answered emails after midnight, the contract in a language you do not read. Mine was the butcher shop. Tell me yours was worse.

okay I need to know if I'm the only one who saw the flags and walked in anyway lol one gallery I emailed back in my first year, the owner replied three weeks late, called my work "quirky" in a tone that felt like a warning, and the contract had a clause I couldn't fully parse. I signed it anyway because I was so desperate to have SOMETHING on a wall. it ended with them holding a piece of mine for months past the agreed return date and me having to basically beg to get it back. lesson learned the hard way. what's the red flag you ignored? did it bite you or did it surprise you and turn out fine? x

Small printmaker, so this is not some big studio story. I sell at two markets a month and take the odd commission, prints from €35 up to about €280 for the big framed ones. In January I put everything up by a third. Not because I'd found religion about my worth, mostly because framing costs went through the roof and I was sick of eating it. Didn't announce it, didn't write a post about it, just changed the numbers on the board. The thing nobody warns you about: the actual sales barely moved. Maybe a few less of the cheap ones. But the messages changed completely. The crowd that wants a €40 framed original signed to their mother in law on a Tuesday for a wedding on Friday? Thinned out. The people who do get in touch now ask real questions, sizes, editions, can they collect it Saturday. One lad last month paid a deposit before he'd even seen the block proof. I spent years thinking I had a pricing problem when what I had was a sorting problem. The low price wasn't making me sales, it was making me correspondence. The bit I got wrong though: I still price the small unframed ones too low and I know it. There's a stack of hares on the shelf downstairs telling me so. Curious if anyone else found the same after a rise, or if it was the opposite and the whole thing fell off a cliff.