Charged a gallery €250 for a small collage and it took me 14 hours because I kept starting over
I delivered a small piece last week, 20x25cm, torn pages from a 1930s French anatomy book, just three elements on a pale ground. Charged €250. The gallery sells my work at €480 and takes 50%, so I got €240. It took me 14 hours because I kept scrapping it and starting again. That's about €17 an hour before materials.
I know the math is bad. Objectively I know. But I also know I wouldn't have made it faster if I'd rushed. The quiet part is I'm not sure I want to work faster. I want to sit with a piece until it's right. That's the whole point of doing this.
I don't know what to do with that. Raise the price and risk the gallery dropping me? Accept that collage is a loss leader for a life I'd be living anyway?
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Ah sure, the maths is desperate and you know it is, but here's the thing, you're not wrong either. That sitting-with-it till it's right, that's not inefficiency, that's the work. The piece you'd have knocked out in four hours wouldn't be the same piece, and you'd know it every time you looked at it.
I've had prints where I've pulled twenty proofs and binned the lot before I'd even let the roller near the block I actually wanted. And you stand there looking at the wreckage and think, well that's a day gone and nothing to show for it. Except you do have something to show, you just can't sell it. You figured out what it wasn't.
The gallery's making their half either way. The question is whether you can get the price up to where the maths doesn't make you wince. €480 retail and you're seeing €240, could they shift it at €600? Would they even try? Sometimes they'll surprise you if you ask. And if they won't, there's other walls to hang on.
But don't beat yourself up for taking the time. The ones you rushed always look rushed. The ones you sat with, they breathe.
That last bit especially. The wreckage you can't sell but taught you something. I think that's what people outside don't see, that the finished piece is just the visible part. The rest is all the ones you didn't make.
Fourteen hours and one small collage. I don't know how to factor the failed attempts into the price. Maybe you just can't.