The Art of Pricing Your Work
At Chester Arts Fair we work with both established Artists as well as emerging independent Artists. Artists with gallery experience and consistent sales histories already know the range of base prices that typical good quality works of their art sell for. For those trailing new distribution channels, below is a quick summary of pricing fundamentals:
Step 1: Define your market. Where do you sell your art? Do you sell locally, regionally, nationally or internationally? The art, artists and prices in your market are the ones you should pay the most attention to.
Step 2: Define your type of art. What kind of art do you make? What are its physical characteristics? In what ways is it similar to other art? How do you categorize it? If you paint abstracts, for example, what kind of abstracts, how would you describe them? This is the type of art that you want to generally focus on for comparison purposes.
Step 3: Determine which artists make art similar to yours either by researching online or visiting galleries, open studios or other venues and seeing their work in person. Pay particular attention to those artists who also have career accomplishments similar to yours, who’ve been making art about as long as you have, showing about as long as you have, selling about as long as you have and so on.
Step 4: Calculate all costs in producing your art; materials, studio hire, the number of hours worked on the piece at your hourly rate etc. This will determine your breakeven point and you can then add your % for profit.
Step 5: See how much these similar artists charge for their art. Their prices will be good initial estimates of the prices you should charge.
Step 6: Finally, being clear and consistent when pricing your art gives you credibility as an artist. It gives your customers faith in their investment – which results in more sales!
Get in touch with the CAF team by calling 01244 952020 or email info@blackmango.co.uk should you have any questions in regards to the above information.