How I Price Original Paintings
After years of not really understanding how to price my work, I have finally put in the effort and created a method that I feel best values my artwork at this time.
The difficult part of pricing art is that it seems to be very subjective. I would try to price my art according to the prices that I saw other artist price their work. But there never seemed be an explanation for why those prices existed. Pair that with the exorbitant pricing of over a million dollars for a blank red canvas that I'd hear about in the art world and confusion is the answer to a pot of soup I felt lost in. Whenever I would come up with a price, I would be asked to clarify why I thought that was the value of the piece and I never really had an answer.
I ended up feeling overwhelmed when it came to pricing my art. One method I learned was to track the hours spent on creating the piece and then give myself an hourly wage around $20 or more, but the problem with that is, what do I do when each piece varies in how long I would spend on it? I'm not sure if you've experienced this, but there are times when the inspiration hits and I effortlessly dance a painting into being, forgetting time while my brush paints stroke after stroke. Often I find that I end up spending only a few hours on that piece. Then there are times, when I would spend hours painstakingly pouring over the details of another piece and it would double or triple the amount of time I spent painting that work of art. So a consistent price point is impossible to find when pricing my art hourly. I had almost given up hope of figuring this out and thought to myself I should just try to get into a gallery and let them tell me how it works. I have no idea if a gallery would do that.
With the beginning of a new year, I decided it was time to take action. I mean seriously, I have stacks of paintings and they just keep piling up. So I sat down, did some research and found out there is a way to price my art with consistency. By implementing the price per square inch method, each piece is relatively priced with there being consistency across all different sizes, and the best part is that this is a tried and tested method that most artists use.
So in case you are wondering how that works, I use the qualifier of $3.00 per sq inch. Why $3.00? Because a google search told me that for my level of experience, $3.00 is a pretty good place to start. I then add up to, but never exceeding, $125 worth of supplies per piece and voila! When people inquire into a price for my art, I now have an answer. So if you are interested in any of my paintings, reach out and I will give you a quote. Act now, because $3.00 per square inch is the cheapest it's going to be for my original art pieces. Turns out, the value of an artist is in how much professional exposure they have. What is my end goal? Sell an art piece worth $1,000,000. It's been done before, so why not me?
