Pricing For the Rest of Us

Pricing For the Rest of Us

Are you in that inbetween world of keeping your prices low so you can sell to your friends and neighbors

but you need them high enough so a gallery will still look at your work? The truth is that if your prices are low enough to sell to friends, a gallery won't look at your stuff. Sigh. What to do?

Solution 1: a tiered approach. Produce printed or quasi printed pieces that you can sell more cheaply and other stuff that is more costly or high end and can be placed in a gallery. You can go the giclee route or print something on a home computer or even at the drugstore. The key is appropriate disclosure. I do pen and ink subjects that I print on artist grade papers, heat set and then add a layer of watercolor. They are in between all the usual definitions of edition numbered prints and original watercolors. They are somewhat mass producible but each one is unique. Like a monoprint. 

The two paintings below have a heat-set computer printed base done on high-end papers and then worked over with watercolor. They are each a little different, but take a little less time as the design and inking process has been repeated. I sometimes add more ink work to each one.

Solution 2: "De-ascension 2nd's and pieces of lesser artistic value. They clutter up the studio. Have a once a year sale and ditch a bunch of stuff. Rational: your friends wouldn't know a good piece of art if it fell on them. That was harsh! Philosophically, Thomas Kinkade and Bob Ross aside, I'm not sure I agree with that. I believe that a good piece of art has a depth of feeling that even the most wooden (or less education or discerning) of observers can sense. There is a downside. Your reputation has value and those lesser works could come back to haunt you. So If you've been hoarding a stash of paintings on velvet done in your student days and now want to quietly sell them off, the rules of Karma demand that your local gallery manager will find out.

-insert photo of favorite work of lesser genius here-

-this space intentionally left blank as I have no works of lesser genius. They are all brilliant!-

Solution 3: Don't even try to sell to friends. They often don't buy artwork anyway so don't even go there. Period. Yes, they buy expensive shoes, but just try to get them to buy a lasting piece of art (for the same price as that pair of shoes!) that will last a hundred years and not go out of fashion after one season. It's not completely their fault. There are no million dollar ad campaigns on commercial TV shilling the value of brand Vicky when it comes to wall décor. Even the large art museums are loath to spend on TV coverage. The concept of buying art is totally foreign to most consumers and social media has not come close to changing that. VanGogh and Rembrandt are not going to go viral anytime soon.

More on pricing methods another time. The price per square inch method needs a serious redux.

Happy painting!
Vicky