I finally looked at what a small still life actually costs me per hour
Someone asked me last week for a 30x40 cm still life, "something simple, just fruit." I quoted 1,400 euros and heard myself say it too fast, like apologising.
So I sat down with the receipts, which I never do, because I knew I would not like it. Linen at 46 euros the metre, and I waste a good quarter of it cutting. The lead ground, the flake white, one tube of lapis I bought in March and have been rationing like it's medicine. Twenty-two hours at the easel, plus the sittings arranging the fruit and re-arranging it because the light moved. Framing in the rue Auguste Comte, 190.
It comes out under 25 euros an hour. My student who does wedding photography gets 90.
The thing is I will not go back to 900 for this size, and I know two people in this city who will do it for 600 and be happy. So the price is not really about the painting. It is about whether I want to be one of those painters. I do not. But I have been sitting on that 1,400 for three days, and I still have not sent the email.
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The line about hearing yourself say it too fast, like apologising, that is the whole thing. I do cyanotypes and I have the same reflex when someone asks for "just a small blue print." The sun and the saltwater do half the work, so surely it should be cheap. Nobody counts the paper you ruined learning which papers take the seawater at all, or the hours standing over a tray watching for the moment it turns.
But I would say the fruit is the expensive part, not the lapis. Twenty-two hours arranging and re-arranging because the light moved, that is the work, and it is invisible in the finished thing. A simple subject does not make a simple painting. It just makes it harder to hide behind.
The ruined paper is the honest line. I keep a stack of failed sheets in the studio and every so often someone picks one up and says it's lovely, and I have to explain it's a test. Nobody prices the learning.
Though I'd push back a little on the sun doing half the work. It does the exposure, not the decision about when to pull it. That judgement is the same as the arranging.
Fair pushback, and you're right, I gave the sun too much credit. What I meant is that the sun does the part I can't argue with, and the timing is the part I can, which is exactly the decision you're describing. The failed sheets are the tuition. I stopped calling them failures in front of clients years ago, it was confusing everyone including me.
You're right about the fruit, and it stings a little to read it put that plainly. The lapis is the easy thing to point at because it has a price on the tube. The arranging is where the painting actually gets decided, and you can't invoice for a decision.
Your ruined papers are the same money. Nobody wants to pay for the learning, only for the thing that came out of it, as if the failures were optional. They're not. They're the method.