The Price of Paint

I know I know. I am supposed to finish last weeks post about what you do when you can’t find your natural artistic connection to your work. I am putting it on hold for at least another week. The reason? Like I said in the first post, I am not sure where I stand on the issue. I do not want to just throw a bunch of B.S. at you. I want to really have a good conclusion to my feelings. Bear with me and please think about it yourself and send emails or post on the blog with your opinion.

So here is what I am pondering this week. Well not so much pondering as discussing the conclusion I came to as an artist and feel is a good template for others to consider.

How do we price our work? In this case paintings. Exactly what is the price of paint?

We have all gone to galleries, shows or other venues and seen prices for paintings that seem to bear no resemblance to anything practical. One artist will have paintings priced in the hundreds and be right next to an artist with no more or even less popularity pricing paintings for thousands. Why? Neither artist is using more expensive materials nor has a greater following than any other artist around them. I have a theory about this. I truly believe most artists price their work based on their own emotional attachment to the painting or their perception of its quality. If you are one of these you are making a big mistake and it could have a lot to do with your ability to make a living as an artist. Lets take a quick look at why this is and why I am making an absolute statement.

The first and, I think, most common problem is the artist who is so attached to their work that they value it beyond any market reason. That means that when they put the work on their website, take it to a show or hang it in a gallery it will not sell. Or perhaps it takes months, years or many shows before it finally sells. That is all well and good if you have no desire to work as a professional but if you do want to make a living you need to price your work at a level the market will bear. That means if no one will buy your work at its listed price, or if sells are so slow you cannot make a living, you are priced too high. Your work may be fantastic and it may ultimately rock the world but right here in the now it is only financially worth what some will pay. That is the capitalist market-driven reality of economics, my right-brained comrade, and no amount of wishing is going to change that. 

If that is not something you can bear, or if you paint so slowly or your costs are so high you cannot make a living otherwise, you are not in a position to work solely as a professional. You will have to work on the side or be supported by someone else while you strive to find or develop a market for your paintings. I have actually heard people who should know better, including too many gallery owners, say that you must price your work high or people will think it is not worth anything. Implication being you get what you pay for. That is so fundamentally flawed it is hard to get into the mistake of such an attitude. From a gallery owners perspective you might defend high pricing because they will, if they are any good, try hard to use their knowledge and salesmanship to get you that price. 

Let me talk about some of the most severe problems.

For example, an artist in a gallery will feel pressure to sell outside the gallery at the same price as in the gallery. This is because they do not want to undercut the price in the gallery. Some galleries are very particular about this by the way. Painters who have sold at higher prices in galleries will think they can also get those prices at shows outside the gallery environment. You will, in fact, find yourself under pressure, often self-imposed, to do just this. Success selling in shows at these prices is rarely the case because most artists are not very good at sales and self-promotion.

Using the gallery system is becoming an increasingly deadend career move until you are able to break into the high-end gallery system. This is a system that reaches into a specific socio-economic class. When that happens you will know and in all likelihood you will be doing just fine as a professional as well. Until then relationships with galleries tend to artificially drive your prices up, decrease over all sales because a gallery will take 40-60% you end up with less money. Before tying yourself to the gallery system ask yourself this very important question. Would I sell more of my paintings at shows, or via my website, if the price were half what it is in a gallery? If so sell your paintings at half the gallery price. Financially you make as much or more money than if you were in the gallery. You are only going to get on average half of the sell price when hanging in the gallery.  So let’s look at what can happen as a result of tying sales and prices to galleries. 

• Paintings won’t sell because the price is too high.
• The artist is tied to a gallery.
• Obligation to keep prices high outside the gallery.
• Reduced number of paintings in collectors hands.
• Fewer people exposed to paintings.
• Dramatically lower profits to the artist. 

Actually if you look at this issue with truly business eyes the financial common sense of doing this is even more profound. Especially as your career and patronage grows. Let me explain why. Here is how the gallery system commonly works at the lower and mid levels with successful galleries. Once you move into the upper tier this changes more because of the shear escalation in price than anything else but we are not discussing that here.

Lets say you have 10 paintings you are going to hang in a gallery. For simplicity we will say the gallery wants those paintings to hang at $1000.00 each. The gallery will demand two common things. One a 50% cut of the sell price and two that they frame or dress the works for the gallery. That’s right. Most entry and mid level galleries will expect your paintings to not only be framed but framed by them. Did I mention you will bear the cost of framing with the majority of galleries? Have you ever noticed that most of the galleries at this level are also frame shops? 

So lets look at what is happening. The painting is being sold for $1000.00. You will have a cost of production for the painting. Canvas, paint, brushes and very likely framing. Say it is an average 20X30 oil painting using a combination of paint grades and you have never spent money taking it to shows before, we can put your cost at around $150 with the frame from all sources. So now your best take is going to be $350 on the $1000.00 price. We will not even get into galleries that will charge hanging fees here. Yes that happens as well. So you were VERY successful hanging over the next few months and sell 5 of the 10 paintings before the gallery either ask for the remainder to be removed or replaced with new paintings. Here is where you stand financially. You spent $750 in framing and production for the 5 sold paintings and $500 in framing for the unsold paintings. Your cost is a total of $1250.00. You sold $5000.00 in paintings of which the gallery received half leaving you with $2500.00. Subtract the cost you incurred preparing for the show and you will walk away from selling 5 paintings with $1250.00. You will have a tax obligation so your take home from hanging your paintings will be closer to $800.00 for 3 months in attempted sells. You will have 5 frames with that but that is less valuable than you might think and you no doubt could get much more cost efficient show frames from an artist supply house.

Lets take those 3 months and do something else with them. Same 10 paintings with $250 max all of the paintings can be framed in show frames. Treat your frames as loss leaders (look it up). In those 3 months you could reasonably find 5 local to regional art shows from spring to fall. We will say attending those shows cost you $700 in booth fees, $100 in gas and you have to spend 2 nights out costing another $250. These are high costs but that is OK. We have now spent $1200.00 to attend the art shows. Now if your work was so good you sold 5 of 10 at $1000.00 in gallery I can personally guarantee you will sell all 10 (or 10 total) if you show at art focused shows. Do not price at $1000.00. Price at 60%of the gallery price making your paintings $600.00 each. You will be making more than you would in a gallery and have offset your cost with the slight increase while still making the paintings far less expensive and thus more likely to sell. So at the end of the same 3 months you have exposed your work to far more people, put twice as many into homes and businesses where they will generate yet more sales, lowered your price thus giving you more upward market room in your pricing that goes straight to your pocket and made much much more money. How much? Lets take a look.

Ten paintings sold for a total sells of $6000.00. Your cost for doing the shows (not counting food because you will eat show or not) was $1250.00. That leaves you with a net profit of $4,750.00. Take out taxes for the government and you have made around $3.325.00 by showing the same paintings even at a lower price than the $800 you made  selling five paintings at the higher price via the gallery. That’s 4 times the profit and you have exposed your paintings to many times more people and successfully placed them in twice as many patron’s hands.

This is how you build patronage. Your relationship with your collectors is personal and you or a close intermediary are directly in control of that relationship. If you are creating compelling artwork you might be surprised how quickly you will find it difficult to even have enough unsold paintings to do shows. That BTW is when prices go up. When demand exceeds supply prices rise until demand equals supply.

Yes my explanation above may exceed the mandate of the post but I felt it might prove useful to be more thorough.

I will try to be more concise on the second issue and my personal solution.  

An artist who prices their work in a personally subjective manner is also making a fundamental mistake. This puts you the artist in the position of critic, patron and marketer. You should be none of these. Let me point out a few of the problems. 

The critic problem. I cannot imagine I am fundamentally different from most artists and here is something I have repeatedly noticed concerning my own work. I am THE WORST judge of what someone will like. Well at least so far as my paintings go. I cannot tell you how many times paintings I was reluctant to even make available for sale have been wildly popular. They also sold much faster than paintings I loved more. It seems weird that we as the artist would find ourselves such poor critics of our own work but there it is. I am more than sure I am not alone in noting this tendency. I know this sounds so counter-intuitive but the truth is we paint or create almost as channels for the imagery or visual message. This does not necessarily mean that we create work that appeals to us. I have created paintings that I hated and only showed when I had nothing left to show. One time in particular I got a call not an hour after dropping off a painting to be told two women were in a bidding war over the painting. I long ago stopped trying to judge what people would like (my wife says I’m lying.)

The patron problem. If you are, as noted above, deciding which of your paintings are better than others then how do you approach talking about paintings with your patrons? What if the painting they really like is priced low compared to other paintings? Does this send a bad message? Do they end up not getting what they want because they are second guessing their own judgment and taste? If you do this you do a disservice to yourself and your collectors.

I strongly caution against using either of the above methods to set your prices. Do not let your prices and potential profits, thus your earnings, be dictated by another’s business requirements or your own subjective attachments.

So now that I have told you not to use either of the most popular, or common, methods of pricing what do I recommend? I humbly submit to you the “Stuckey Method” of pricing paintings. I have been doing this for about a decade and it has been catching on pretty well. It is dead simple, does not make favorites in paintings, is applied across the board to all paintings and allows anyone interested in purchasing your paintings to know exactly what their cost will be. Not to mention it allows small incremental price increases in relation to natural market forces as your work becomes more popular and you find it difficult to keep up with commissions.

OH! That’s right I have not even said what it is. It is Square Inch Pricing. Or as I call it S.I.P. You price your paintings by the square inch. No matter the size. No matter the subject. No matter if you love the painting. It is a constant pricing. If someone wants to know what your painting cost you can tell them to simply take square inch size of the painting and multiply it by your price and, tada, you have the price. No one feels like they are being giving random prices or a price another did not get. Even better it is something collectors can latch onto. Here is how. If you are succeeding as an artist in selling you will find that the price your paintings are selling for in the S.I.P. will need to gradually go up so you can balance the supply and demand for your paintings. It works like this. Lets say for example you charge a S.I.P. of $1 but you find that when people are calling for paintings you do not have anything to sell because they are selling as fast as you paint. Thus the supply of your work is becoming restricted. It is time to push your S.I.P. up. Lets say to $1.10. So after a few months you notice you still cannot keep up. So you raise the S.I.P. to $1.20. After a few months you have a 2-3 paintings available in the studio when people are calling so for the time being you are balancing supply and demand and you and your collectors know the value of your work has increased 20%. Since you are using the pricing across all paintings it allows you to really keep a very accurate track of your current value and communicate that to collectors. Also, if the economy goes bad, as it has the last few years, you can make controlled across the board adjustments to bring you back to a market price.

In the many many years I have struggled with these issues this is by far the best method I have come up with. Patrons and collectors love it. It is easy for marketing and it makes questions about prices unnecessary. It also opens up conversation threads with potential customers as you explain the philosophy of pricing in such an egalitarian way.

SO here is the formula. Give it a try. I think you will like the control it gives you over the value of your body of work.

The “Stuckey Method” 

Square Inch Pricing-S.I.P. (long edge of painting X short edge of painting X price per inch=Price for the painting.)

To figure out a good starting point take a look at the price your last several paintings sold for and figure out the price that would have been using S.I.P. You might want to lower the S.I.P. just a bit and then bring it back up if you need to.

Hopefully this will work as well for you as it has for me the last several years.

-STUCKEY-

The Price of Paint

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