"Mission San Juan Capistrano", 8x10, oil on Vincent Masterpiece linen
People sometimes ask me why my paintings sometimes have wide price variations within similar size groupings. I have decided to try to address this question, as honestly and succinctly as I possibly can, within this post.
Deciding on the price of a painting is a complicated issue, and while some artists maintain a pricing scale within a size range, (or a price per square inch scale), I do not price my paintings according to size. When considering the price of a painting, I carefully weigh many factors, including but not limited to the following: cost of supplies, time invested, percentage paid to a third party, and costs of additional expenses such as frames and shipping. In order for me to be more specific about each of these factors. I’ve gone into more detail below, and I hope that you’ll continue reading.
The first issue concerns supplies, and although not every artist has to weigh this issue, (probably because they paint the same way consistently), I paint in many different styles, and with different techniques, so I must address it here. For me personally, a painting that was done with a palette knife, resulting in thick impasto layers, is much more costly to produce than a painting that I have done with a brush, for the simple reason being that I apply my paint with the palette knife in much the same way that I would spread icing on a cake, and since I almost always use high quality paint, this can result in even a small painting costing a lot of money to create. In addition, even the colors that I’ve used will have an effect on the overall cost of the painting, since the cost varies tremendously from manufacturer to manufacturer depending on color and brand. To take this one step further, when I need an orange color, I only use Mussini (Schminke) cadmium orange, because of its beautiful vibrancy and consistency, and the cost of a 35 ml tube of this paint is easily around $50. Compare that to a student grade orange which costs under $10.00 and it’s easy to see why a painting that I’ve done with a palette knife and which has a lot of orange hues in it, would be much more costly to produce than one done with less costly colors and painted with brush only. Color choices can be elaborated on even further here, for even if a painting has no noticeable local orange color, I also custom mix my burnt sienna from orange, red and green, so it’s predictable that a painting that I’ve done in my custom mixed earth tones would still be more costly than a painting that was done by using an average grade of pre-mixed ochres and burnt sienna. And if we are going to talk about yellow ochre, a typical tube of average grade yellow ochre costs under $10. However, I mix my own yellow ochre from two very costly tubes of paint- Old Holland Indian yellow-brown and Rembrandt Cobalt Violet. The result is a gorgeously vibrant yellow ochre that has cost significantly more for me to mix and use than a typical tube of Winsor and Newton pre-mixed yellow ochre would have.
In addition to the paint cost and application process (knife versus brush), I also take into consideration what kind of support I’ve used on the painting. While I prefer oil-primed linen above everything else, I do not always use oil primed linen for my work, because of the cost. Linen is much more costly to paint on than canvas or hardboard, and oil primed linen is even more costly than acrylic-primed linen. So hopefully, you are starting to see why a painting done with paint that’s leftover from yesterday’s palette, and done with a brush instead of a knife, and on a canvas panel rather than on oil –primed linen, is going to be substantially less expensive to produce, than a basket or oranges, painted with a palette knife on a Vincent Masterpiece support!
In addition to cost of supplies, the amount of time it took for me to create the painting and the degree of satisfaction in the final outcome will also be carefully weighed as I consider how to price the work. For example, if I’ve worked on a portrait or figure for almost a week, (portraits take me much more time than landscapes, generally speaking, and cost of the model is sometimes part of the equation, too), and I think that the painting came out well and is exhibit-worthy, I am bound to price it considerably higher than a two or three hour study, even if both pieces are the same size.
The next consideration is whether or not the painting is going to a gallery or show. All galleries and exhibit venues charge a commission to the artist, as well they should, but the process becomes further complicated by the type of gallery or exhibit where the work is to be shown. If, for example, the gallery is a local not-for-profit art center, then the typical commission is probably going to be less than a brick and mortar gallery on Main Street, USA. All of these varying considerations are reasonable and legitimate (economically speaking) from the artists’ point of view, but can be difficult to explain to art collectors who may see a significant difference in pricing per size from works sold directly from the artist online, compared to a similar sized work sold in a gallery where the artist is represented. Many collectors also do not realize that there are additional expenses involved in framing and shipping the paintings off to the various galleries around the country (or world), and that they can be significant expenses that the artist has incurred. The benefit to the artist to have his/her work seen up close and personal in a gallery setting is usually well worth the additional expense, and especially if the gallery owner has also promoted the artist within his/her own marketing venues. In addition, most collectors also appreciate the experience of being able to walk into a beautiful gallery and view the artwork with their own eyes, rather than through a computer monitor. Works almost never appear the same on the computer screen, as they do in person, and I have always been delighted by the response when people purchase one of my paintings online, and who are so delighted when they see how much more beautiful it is in person, that they’ll call me or send me an email to express their joy. Such are just a few of the factors that come into play when I am deciding pricing for pieces within a specific venue or setting.
In the end, I hope that this article has been somewhat helpful and informative for the people who sometimes ask me why my paintings can vary so much in price. While I know many painters who have a much simpler method of calculating their prices, I simply have not yet been able to come up with a pricing scale per square inch that works well for me, since so many factors are involved. In the future, I hope that I can at least narrow the gap between pricing of similar sized works by painting with more consistent supplies, but until I can always afford (or not!) to purchase oil-primed linen and cobalt violet paint, I can only hope that collectors reading this article can now better understand how complicated pricing paintings can be for artists-and especially for me!
Thanks for reading. Your comments are very welcome.
"Bittersweet Memories", 12x16, oil on Claussens linen
