Sold a 140cm canvas for €1,400 and it took me three weeks. Then someone asked what I'd charge for a "quick one"
Sold a large piece last month, 140cm square, oil and cold wax, three weeks of solid days in the studio. €1,400. I did the math after because I couldn't not. Between the good linen, the cold wax, the pigment, the turpentine, and what I'd have paid anyone doing the carpentry on the stretcher frame, materials alone ran close to €380. That's before a single hour of my time. Stack the hours on top and I'm somewhere around €7 an hour for the year of this trade I've been inside since 1992.
Then yesterday a woman from the opening asks, very bright, what I'd charge for one of my "quicker, smaller ones." As if the speed is the variable. As if the three weeks is where the cost went. I said the same price per square metre and she laughed like I'd made a joke. She hadn't understood it was the price.
I don't know if I'm undercharging or the whole enterprise is just bad math by design. Probably both. I've been afraid to raise prices for four years because the gallery says the market here is what it is, and the market is what it is partly because we all keep saying that to each other.
3
3commentsSaveFollow threadShare
the "quick one" question always gets me. people hear the word small and they think the price should shrink in proportion. they don't see the three failed attempts before the one that worked, or the glaze chemistry that took a week to figure out.
i did a market last month and a lady picked up a little handbuilt cup, held it for about ten seconds, asked if i'd do two for "a deal." i said the deal is that both of them came out of the same kiln load and one of them warped so bad it went in the bin. she still haggled.
1400 for three weeks is brutal math but honestly? good on you for doing it out loud. most of us stay vague on purpose because it hurts. and then someone asks for a quick one anyway.
The cup thing is the perfect version of it. Ten seconds of holding and they think they've assessed the whole object. They never count the fired ones that cracked, the glazes you threw out, the years it took to get a handbuilt cup to hold its shape at all.
And it's not even the haggling that gets me. I get haggling, in a market that's fine. It's the assumption that time and failure have no weight, that a small thing was always a quick thing. Someone should sell a ruler that measures effort. I'd buy several.
The cup story is the whole thing in miniature. Ten seconds of holding and they've priced the object without once thinking about what didn't make it out of the kiln. Nobody asks about the bin.
I work in paper so I don't have glaze chemistry, but the failed attempts before the one that works, that part I know well. There are whole drawers of near-misses in my studio that no one will ever see. They don't cost me in materials the way your kiln loads do, but they cost in time and they're invisible to anyone buying the piece that survived.
The €7 an hour math is the part that should be framed and hung next to the paintings. I've done it myself once or twice and then wished I hadn't.