Art & Creativity: The Price is Right… Or IS It?

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I have always found that pricing my art is one of the hardest things out there.

How do we go about valuing creativity? Do we actually sit down and logically figure out what our time is worth per hour, and then calculate how long it takes us to finish a given piece, and then create a price based on hours and effort? Or do we take a far more arbitrary in intuitive approach and look at something and say ”this feels like $100!”

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My years of experience tells me that many artists struggle with this very thing, and we can learn a lot about ourselves from the process of *"setting prices."

More often than not artists tend to undervalue themselves by a considerable amount... and getting them to price their art any higher involves a whole lot of shrugging and blushing and ”aw shucks” statements before anybody gets any further.

Meanwhile, I've also met artists who go right ahead and price their work like they are the second coming of Christ even though they have relatively little talent but they certainly have a very high impression of their own self worth.

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Earlier today I found myself looking over a bunch of my items for sale via various online venues and came to the realization that quite a few of them were being priced at exactly the same amount as they were priced about 10 years ago.

At the thought of making from price adjustments, there was a strange little voice inside that said something along the lines of ”people will become very upset if you raise your prices, and you'll stop selling anything!”

Which is actually pretty silly because I was just at the store earlier today and noticed how a can of cat food has gone from $0.79 to $1.29 just in the last three months. Should my cat be outraged by that? Or should we simply accept that it's part of the world we live in as time progresses the price of things go up.

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What Others Are Doing...

From time to time I creep on some of my colleagues’ — yes I actually have "colleagues" in the stone painting business — websites to see what they're up to, and I observed today that two of the primary artists in this particular space are now selling their large pieces for as much as $250 to $300.

As a counterpoint, mine are still $90-120, just like they were in 2013. Maybe there's something wrong with that picture.

And again I also have to remind myself that both of aforesaid colleagues have the benefit of having been able to concentrate full time when their art for the past ten years because they are not fully dependent on their art or nor on other work they do themselves in order to make a living.

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Clearly, life would be a lot easier if I didn't have bills to pay that pushes art into the background as a very much part time thing since I spend most of my time working on the simple business of making a living.

I know my work well enough to know that if I had started out as being independently wealthy 10 years ago I would probably have gotten pretty far.

But life is what life is. These are the cards that were dealt and we just have to play the hand as best we can.

Meanwhile, I still have to figure out whether I need to make some price adjustments!

Thanks for stopping by and looking at my work! Do leave me a comment if you feel so inspired — interaction and engagement are always welcome!

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If you enjoy painted rocks, do check out The Hive Rocks Project and help spread the word about Hive, while also being creative!

Because I am trying to make some semblance of income — a part time living, even — I now add this footer to all my posts, in the hope that someone, somewhere, might decide to take a further look at my work, and perhaps consider supporting independent art.

Thank you, in advance, for your consideration and support!

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Regardless, your upvotes and comments are always appreciated!

Thank you for supporting independent art!

2022.05.23 AS-TXT-101/067



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