Original art, music, and design from one restless mind.
A random listener shared a playlist full of hyperpop and synthwave, and I made a deal with myself: whatever emotions the songs stirred up, I had to paint them in the exact palette they demanded. Neon green happened. Bubblegum pink happened. I survived, mostly.
I painted the same sunrise every single morning for a year—same window, same coffee, same stubborn horizon. Here's what repetition broke, what it built, and why 40 of those paintings now live in strangers' homes.
I handed my Spotify login to a guy I'd met twice and let shuffle mode score my entire solo show. The paintings hung the same, the crowd didn't—and the strangest part is what actually flew off the wall.
After my eleventh gallery rejection, I mounted an entire solo show above the dryers of a 24-hour laundromat in Dayton. It sold more paintings in three weeks than two years of white-wall submissions—and taught me everything galleries never could about who actually buys art.
I ditched the gallery openings and the Etsy refresh button for a $40 folding table at my local farmers market. Four weekends later, I'd learned more about who actually buys art — and why — than in five years of chasing collectors online.
When I couldn't face another 2 a.m. Photoshop session, I handed my album art over to a middle school art class in Ohio. The winning design came from an eight-year-old named Priya—and it charted. Here's what happened to my ego, my numbers, and my understanding of who art is really for.
I handed my entire gallery night—piece selection, wall placement, even the price tags—to a guy who delivers packages for a living and had never seen a single one of my paintings. Here's what a total stranger sees when they look at your life's work with zero context.
I hid my ugliest canvas in the back of a craft fair booth, face to the wall, and the buyer for a museum gift shop snagged it before I could stop her. Turns out my taste is just one opinion—and not even a particularly reliable one.
I handed pricing power for my paintings to my grandma, a retired bookkeeper who thinks 'artist math' is a scam. Thirty days of her ledgers, awkward negotiations, and surprisingly fair deals taught me more about value than a decade of second-guessing ever did.
A botched CMYK profile turned my brightest painting into a murky, moody mess—and customers couldn't stop buying it. Here's how I learned that sometimes the machine knows something you don't.
A regional band offered me exposure and a tank of gas for one of my designs. Two years later, that artwork had crossed the country on tour merch, a billboard, and a Spotify banner—and I still own none of it. Here's the deal I'd undo, and the plain-English terms I now demand before any handshake.
A small regional coffee chain wanted my paintings in every location. I said yes. Then their lawyer sent over a redline, and one sentence in section four changed everything. Here's the whole negotiation, clause by clause, so you don't make my mistakes.
For one full season, I played a different open mic every week inside a 50-mile radius of my house and kept notes like a mystery shopper with a guitar. Here's the field report: which rooms fed my songs, which ones ate me alive, and why five distracted strangers taught me more than a year of streaming stats.
I handed a d20 and a jar of numbered slips the curatorial reins for my latest show. What the randomness selected—and what it left behind—taught me more about my own taste than a decade of deliberate choices.
For seven days I posted my brush settings, layered source files, and sample packs for anyone to grab. What came back wasn't mine — and that turned out to be the whole point.
I pressed 50 records, slapped a blank price tag on each one, and promised a personalized voice memo to anyone who paid over $20. What happened next says a lot about strangers, physical media, and one very committed two-dollar man.
Every artist has one color that got away. Mine shows up in old sketchbooks, half-mixed palettes, and a decade of almost-right canvases. This is the story of the hue that lived in my head and refused to live anywhere else.
The first sketch I ever sold went for five dollars. The most recent piece left my studio for $1,800, and honestly, the gap between those two numbers isn't just about skill. Here's the unfiltered breakdown of what actually changed — on the paper, in the process, and mostly in my head.
I put a single original track on Bandcamp with no minimum price and let strangers decide what it was worth. The results—down to the penny, and the stranger notes that came with them—taught me more about value than any royalty statement ever has.
For one month, I posted every finished piece untitled and let the comments section do the naming. Here's what strangers called my art, what buyers said after the fact, and why I'm probably never titling a canvas alone again.