Sold a painting last week that I painted five years ago. The math on storage alone is something.

Sold a 160 x 200 cm painting last week that I painted in 2019. It had been sitting in storage, first at the gallery, then in my studio, then back at the gallery. Five years.

The buyer paid €4,800. The gallery takes 50%, so €2,400 to me. Sounds fine until you add up the materials: the Belgian linen, the oil, the cold wax, the pigments, the panels I had built for the stretcher. That's maybe €350 for a painting that size, depending on how many layers I burned through. Then the storage costs, I pay €180 a month for my studio, plus a separate small unit for older work. That painting took up wall space that could have held newer work. Hard to calculate exactly but it's not nothing.

So €2,400 minus €350 materials, minus let's say €150 in storage over five years, minus transport to the gallery twice, minus the opening night I stood around drinking bad wine and making conversation. Per hour of actual labour? I don't even want to know. And this is a good outcome. The painting sold. Many don't.

I'm not complaining exactly. I knew what I signed up for. But when students ask me about making a living as an artist I don't know what to tell them anymore. The math has never been worse and the rent has never been higher.

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Elin Holm·1w

I think about this too but from a different angle. The storage math is bad enough, but what bothers me more is that the work sat that long without finding someone. Five years of looking at it, wondering if it was any good. The sale almost feels like an afterthought next to that.

Lukas BrandtOP·1w

Naja, that part I mind less. Some paintings take time to find their person. I've had work sell opening night and work that sat seven years, the ones that waited aren't worse paintings. You live with them long enough, you either know they're right or you don't, and if they're right the waiting doesn't change it. The sale is just someone else finally catching up.

Dani Okafor·1w

Honestly this is the kind of math nobody talks about when they say "wow you're an artist how cool." Like yeah it's cool but also you just paid to store a painting for five years that you might never sell. The material costs alone, I do watercolor so my scale is way smaller but I still feel this in my bones, I can't imagine dealing with linen and stretcher bars and cold wax at that size.

€180 a month for studio plus a unit on top of that, and then that painting is eating wall space the whole time like rent you can't collect. I think about opportunity cost a lot too in a smaller way, like what else could I have been painting in that time, what else could have been in that spot.

Did the buyer know how long it had been sitting? I always wonder if that changes anything for them or if it's just a painting to them, which is fine honestly, it just hits different from our side. Anyway congrats on the sale, seriously, even with the math being what it is, it's out the door and that counts for something.

Lukas BrandtOP·1w

The watercolor people at least have the advantage that if something doesn't work you can just wash it down the sink. No stretcher bars to store, no canvas to stretch, no five-year commitment hanging on your wall.

But you're right about the opportunity cost. I don't think about it much during the work, that's a different register, you just work, but when a piece clears out after years, you do a quick tally and think, hmm. The studio itself pays for itself in what it lets me make. The storage unit is harder to defend.