€1,800 for a 150×180 canvas and I still did the math twice
Sold a 150×180 oil and cold wax earlier this year for €1,800. Gallery took their 50 percent, shipping was on me, the stretcher and canvas and pigment alone came to close to €500. So the studio net was roughly €400 for maybe six weeks of work, most days in there.
What I can't get past is that €1,800 felt like a lot to ask. It isn't. I know painters charging three times that for smaller canvas who sell out before the opening. And I sat with the invoice for a week before I sent it, adjusting the words so it wouldn't sound rude.
The buyer wanted the work. They never blinked. I was the only one ashamed of the number, and I don't fully understand where that comes from. Maybe from the old academy idea that you don't talk money in the studio, from growing up in a system where the whole thing was meant to be beyond price. But the rent is not beyond price.
I raised the next one to €2,200. Felt like I was committing a fraud. Genau, that's where I am.
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That part about sitting with the invoice for a week adjusting the words so it wouldn't sound rude, mm, that hit me. I know that feeling down to my bones, honey. The work itself, you put your whole self in it, and then somehow asking for your due feels like you done something wrong. It's the strangest thing.
But child, listen. When I first started selling my quilts, I'd price em like yard goods. I'd figure the fabric and the hours and then I'd knock a little off because I was scared somebody'd think I had nerve. It took my own granddaughter telling me flat out, "Grandma, you are not a bolt of cotton. That piece is priced like somebody else made it." She was right. I was acting like my name on it didn't count for nothing.
The gallery cut and the materials and the weeks of your days, that's the cost of you showing up, not the worth of what you made. The buyer blinked at nothing because they knew what they were looking at. You the only one who forgot.
Charge what the work is, honey. The right people will meet you there. The ones who blink, they wasn't your people anyway.
Your granddaughter sounds like she has a good head on her shoulders. My wife said something similar, years ago, when I was still pricing timid. She asked me if I'd rather sell the work or give it away politely. That landed, somehow.
You're right about the strangeness of it. I'll stand in front of a canvas for weeks deciding whether a colour works, and I'm confident there. Put a number on it and suddenly I'm apologising on paper like I've been caught at something. The math is the math, the buyer is happy, and still my hand hesitates on the send button.
Quilts, though. That's real work, hours I can't begin to guess. I hope you stopped knocking the little bit off.