Requests for advice on pricing artwork at art festivals/fairs circulate often. Frequently seen are peer recommendations for pricing artwork like selling carpet. They calculate the height and width, apply a multiplier, and slap a price tag on it.
It is the 'Dollars per Square Inch' method I personally despise.
Last time, I wrote that Art is an Energy Storage System. If that is true, then pricing by size is inherently wrong.
A flashlight with a few batteries and a stick of dynamite are roughly the same size. But they hold very different amounts of energy. Art is the same. A 10” x 10” painting can hold a massive charge of mastery, emotion, and vision. A 40” x 60” painting can be empty.
The square-inch method assumes that a bigger canvas equals a bigger impact. It treats an original creation like a commodity. That’s the crime.
No matter how skillfully crafted, an original work of art holds something no copy or print will, the energy, intention, and life experience that manifested the work through the artist’s hand. So while there’s a broadly accepted price range for machine-made prints of a certain size, the size has little relevance to the value of an original one-of-a-kind piece.
For sculptors like myself the equivalent to square inch pricing would be using the weight of materials. This method might be the scrap price, but is not appropriate for selling originals. You wouldn’t use a per ounce price for a marionette the way some people do for a mass-produced gold pendant.
I experienced evidence for the value of art’s energy firsthand recently.
In September, I cast a white gold pendant featuring the tri-spiral—a 5200-year-old symbol. I wore it to Newgrange in Ireland, the very home of that specific symbol. The staff there sees the tri-spiral thousands of times a day. It is on every sign and nearly every souvenir, it’s everywhere. They are immune to the shape.
But a staff member stopped me the moment I entered the visitor center. She pointed to the piece I made and asked where it was from. When I told her I made it myself, she said, 'It’s better than anything we have here. I’d buy one.'
Why did she notice that specific spiral in an ocean of spirals?
Because it was created with Intention.
The souvenirs were low-density, even if some of them were high-priced. They were just shapes. The piece I made carried the weight of the intense effort of creation, the heat, and the focus it took to shape and cast it, hand polish and finish it and bring it to meet the stone carving that inspired it. She felt and was drawn to the density of its energy before she processed the shape.
For a living artist creating fresh work, the Provenance isn't a list of previous owners. The Provenance is the Artist's Intention.
When you buy a painting fresh off the easel, you aren't paying for the canvas and hours of effort. You are paying for the density of the energy stored in it. You are paying for the 20 years of effort that allowed the artist to harness that energy and affix it to the canvas.
We need to stop evaluating art by how much space it consumes in our homes, and start evaluating it by how much space it’s able to occupy in our hearts and minds.
Density matters more than dimensions.
Have you ever purchased something small—art, technology, or a tool—that cost more than the 'big' version, and felt it was worth every penny? Why did the small one carry more value for you?