Putting a price on art
The general rule for pricing art is the same as it is with any product for sale: the item should be priced for whatever the market will stand.
In gauging what the market will bear for your art, it’s important to keep in mind that the price can always go up, but never down. If an artist lowers the price for current work, she-he is undervaluing all the work that was purchased at the higher price.
To get an idea of what to charge, look at the pricing of art that’s similar to yours. Points of comparison are: medium/technique and size of the piece, but also reputation of the artist. Does the artist whose work resembles yours have more press recognition than you? Is the artist or her-his work affiliated with institutions (established galleries or museums or even schools)? If the artist has more of a reputation than you, adjust the fee to reflect where your work stands.
So far as I can tell, an artist who is reasonably well established—who has some press and a few years of serious shows—should sell a 2 by 3 foot painting for around $1500. That’s about where I am and it seems to be the going rate at galleries.
Gwenn Seemel
Before And After: Child Birth
2006 and 2007
acrylic on bird’s eye
30 x 54 inches (together)
These days, my work is priced so that, if I balance my life fairly carefully, I can live off of my painting. Most of my income comes in the form of commission work, but I also sell work from my conceptual series, like this diptych from Swollen. The subjects’ husband/father purchased the portraits for a wedding anniversary.
Much to my delight, I started selling work from the very beginning. I mostly sold out my thesis show. It helped that the paintings were of the university’s art department professors and, too, that the vice president of administrative services at the time (the person in charge of deciding if and what to buy from the senior show) was a big fan of my work!
Seeing five of my seven portraits sold, Tracy MacEwan, a one-time photography and painting professor at the university, told me: “this is the last time you sell a painting of this size for $500!” He helped me to sort out pricing my work early on, and he was also the one to suggest the commission agreement clause that I think is so important.
