Well the upside of gloomy days is you can take great photos of your art. The downside is realizing the hypocrisy of free market capitalism. Yeah in the industrial revolution, you could create something and actually compete - but now with the consolidation and mergers of companies it’s nearly impossible. Take for example this 36 inch by 48 inch painting, there’s only two shipping companies I can use. If I were to ship this in a box that’s literally the same size of the painting the cost of shipping is roughly $36 USD one way. Let’s add 1/2 inch of bubble wrap and 1 and 1/2 inch spacer. That’s a box roughly 40 inches by 50 inches by 6 inches that weighs less than 20 lbs. shipping cost increase to $150 USD for ground shipping. Let’s say you’re shipping that to a juried show where you have to pay return shipping. That’s $300 USD for shipping that you’re eating. There’s no way to recoup those costs and some instance you could buy a plane ticket and fly with the painting or take a day few days off work to drive the painting and still come out ahead. It’s ridiculous and super disheartening, I can’t roll the shipping costs into the cost of the painting to recoup my expenses. What are the odds of actually selling the painting? Will being in a new market increase those odds? Is exposure worth the costs? Those are all subjective answers I suppose, for me it’s just a bummer that there’s only two options for shipping. It’s pretty hard to compete with a gallery or artist that can eat $300 for a one painting in a one month show - just saying.