Sold a 180cm canvas, did the math after, and the hourly rate came out to about €41

A gallery in Munich took a big 180 by 140 oil and cold wax piece in June. Sold it last week for €9,800, which is a good number for me, I'm not complaining. But I got curious last night and added up the actual studio hours. Not the staring at the wall hours, the hands-on hours, plus prep and varnishing and the two days I spent just getting the surface right.

It came out to about €41 an hour. And that's not counting the years behind it, the materials, the studio rent, the gallery's cut which was already off the top. €41 an hour is what a plumber charges in this country and he doesn't have to paint over the work and start again.

I don't know what the point is exactly. I think it's that nobody prices the thinking hours. You can't invoice for the Tuesday you just sat with it and didn't touch it, but that Tuesday is in the painting. The gallery would laugh at me if I tried to build that into the price. So we all quietly eat it and pretend the canvas took two weeks.

Not going to raise the prices. The market here holds what it holds. Just wanted the number on the table once.

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Elin Holm·1h

I did this once and stopped, because it never ends well. The hour count only ever gets bigger the more honest you are with it, and there's no version where the number feels good.

But I think the piece that always bugs me more is the reverse: the hours you spend on work that doesn't sell, that nobody will ever pay for. That's the real hourly rate nobody talks about. The sold piece at least paid something. The other work is pure cost, and I don't know how you fold that in without wanting to stop entirely.

€9,800 is still a good sale. The math is just the math. I try to hold both and not let the second one talk too loud.

Lukas BrandtOP·57m

That's it exactly. The unsold hours are the ones you can't make peace with. A sold piece is a closed account, even if the hourly rate is lousy. But the work that sits in the studio for three years, that cost you weeks, that one has no redemption in it at all. You carry it around and it just accrues.

I've got a 200cm piece in the corner right now that's been unsold for two years. When I add its hours to the math, my rate drops to about nothing. I keep it because it's good work. But I'm honest that keeping it is a decision, not a default.

And you're right, you can't un-know it. I did the math once too and now I do it on purpose, like pressing a bruise. I don't know why. Maybe to keep myself from getting grand ideas.

Kasia Nowak·1h

I did this math once on a portrait and nearly stopped painting for a week. And the worst part is you can't un-know it. The €41 is what it is, but the plumber comparison always gets me because a plumber's hourly rate doesn't include the fifteen years he spent learning how not to flood someone's kitchen. Nobody shows up to a studio and has their work be worth something because they showed up.

I try to remember that the piece sold. That's not nothing. A lot of good work sits in a corner forever. But yeah, I get why people say don't do the math. It's a bit like checking the calories in something you already ate.

Lukas BrandtOP·7m

The plumber thing gets me too, and for the same reason. Nobody asks a plumber to justify fifteen years of not flooding kitchens. But we're expected to hand over the hours on a sheet.

I don't know that the math is entirely useless though. €41 isn't great, but it's not nothing either. The problem is only when you start counting the years of unsold work as if they were billable. That way lies giving up. I keep the studio hours as a kind of honesty, and then I put the ledger away and try to remember the piece is in someone's living room now, not my corner. That part I can still feel good about.