Sold a painting for €4,200 and after the gallery split, materials, transport and the opening dinner I paid for myself I made €1,100

I did the math on a recent sale because I was trying to convince myself it was worth it. Large oil and cold wax, 160 x 200 cm, worked on it for about six weeks on and off. Gallery takes 50%, which is standard here. Fine. Then: stretcher bars and canvas, oil, cold wax medium, pigment, about €280 because I don't buy cheap canvas. Transport to Berlin in a hired van because it wouldn't fit in my car, €120. Insurance for the transit. The opening, where I bought drinks for a few people and we all went to dinner after, and I picked up the bill because the gallery director looked at me and I knew I was supposed to. That was about €340.

So €4,200 becomes €2,100 after commission. Subtract €740 in costs I can track. That leaves €1,360. Then maybe six weeks of work, but not full-time weeks, so call it 18 days. That's about €75 a day. And I haven't paid tax on the €2,100 yet.

I don't know what to do with this information. The painting is sold. The collector is happy. The gallery wants more. And I'm sitting here thinking I should feel good and instead I feel like I ran a small business that lost money on a job. Which I did, if I paid myself minimum wage.

The problem is the painting wouldn't exist without those weeks. I can't separate the time from the thing. And the gallery can't sell a painting they never see. And I can't get the painting to Berlin for nothing. So the costs are real and the math is bad and I don't have a solution. Just the numbers.

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Dani Okafor·2w

Honestly this is so real and so many people don't see this side of it. The gallery split is what it is but it's all the stuff around it that just bleeds you dry without anyone noticing, the transport, the insurance, the dinner you feel weird not paying for. I've definitely done that thing where you're standing there with the bill like "well I guess this is part of the job" and then later you're staring at the numbers being like wait that's IT??

But also, €4,200 on a single painting is huge and you should be proud of that even if the take-home stings. That's a collector paying real money for your work. And I think the first few sales at that level are almost always like this financially while you figure out the business side. Next time you know to factor the dinner into your pricing or ask if the gallery can cover transport since they're taking half, you know?

What are you gonna do differently next time or are you still just processing the math of it all lol

Lukas BrandtOP·2w

Yeah, the "well I guess this is part of the job" moment, that's exactly it. You're standing there and it's just what you do, and then three weeks later you see it in a spreadsheet and think, what was I doing.

The €4,200 is real, I'm not pretending it isn't. But I keep circling back to the same thing: the work itself took six weeks, and the sale took about three months from delivery to payment. So that's roughly four and a half months for one painting, and when I spread the €1,100 across that it's a strange number to look at. You do it for the ones that don't sell, mostly. That's the math I can never make add up but I keep doing it anyway.

Camille Laurent·2w

€4,200 sale and you clear €1,100. I've done this math myself more times than I'd like, and it never stops being a strange feeling. The gallery percentage you knew going in. It's the slow bleed of everything else that catches you.

The transport, the insurance, the materials if you're not cutting corners, and then the opening dinner where you're the one who ends up paying because the gallery director hesitates just long enough that you know it's on you. That part is almost a ritual humiliation. I've been there.

But I wonder, did you sell it? Will you sell more from that show? Because that's the other calculation that doesn't go into the single sale math, whether the gallery relationship and the exposure leads to something. Sometimes it does, sometimes it's just the same math again next time.

The painting itself, 160 x 200 in oil and cold wax, that's a big piece of work. Six weeks. The price per hour of actual labour is probably depressing if you calculate it, but we don't paint by the hour, do we.

Lukas BrandtOP·2w

Sold it, yes. To a collector I'd met once before, which is the part that almost makes it feel accidental, all that logistics and calculation, and in the end it's one person who remembered a studio visit from two years ago. The gallery sold two smaller pieces from the same show as well, which helps spread the cost of the transport across something.

But the dinner thing. I've started just saying beforehand, "I'll cover dinner for anyone who wants to keep going after." It takes the power out of that pause. Costs the same either way but at least I'm not standing there feeling like a mark.