PUTTING A PRICE ON YOUR PAINTINGS

Caption – Town Hall Rain – one of my favourite subjects! (SOLD)

Putting a price on your paintings (A Blog by Mike Barr)

“Once an artist goes public with their work by putting them up for sale, it often presents a problem that we all face. How much is it worth?

The question really is, how much will people pay?

For people who don’t care much for art, it’s worth nothing! Not everyone will like what we do, no matter how amazing it might be, how many hundreds of hours it took to produce or how expensive the materials were.

Of course there are a group of people who love and can afford original art, and these are the ones who appreciate their worth.

With all this in mind we strive to find a way to price our work and there are some interesting viewpoints.

One that is popular is the ‘time and materials’ method. This is where we tally-up the cost of materials and work out an hourly rate.

This may be okay right at the beginning of our painting adventures and at the very least we should cover our expenses. It also puts us in the category of anyone who has to charge for their time – from a tradesperson to a lawyer.

Art is worth more than the time and materials method. Also there are artists that can produce amazing work in a few hours and the hourly rate just doesn’t cut it! On the other hand some artist take hundreds of hours to finish something – charging by the hour could get outrageous.

The really interesting things about painting prices though, is that they are almost always connected with who the artist is. A scribble done by Picasso would be worth a lot at a Sotherby’s Auction, but a scribble done by an average artist alive today would find itself in the Auctioneers rubbish bin – worthless!

The above is an extreme example, but more or less that is how it works in the art world. High prices have come from building a reputation and a following. Needless to say it usually takes many years to accomplish.

I know one artist that did excellent abstract work and he approached a gallery and asked them to sell them for thousands, just like some of the other artists in their fold. Of course they said it was impossible, even though he couldn’t see why not. It’s not about the work, it’s about the name.

Start off by selling at low prices and build up over the years if they are selling well. There are no real shortcuts unless you become notorious for other things – notoriety is a great seller.

Calculating price on the size of a painting is a good method, this way you can gauge your price rises correctly and there is never any guessing game when someone asks you the price”.

Happy Painting