So What is a Painting Worth?

That is a very good question. Wouldn’t it be great if we were paid by the hour and not by our performance?

Case in point: I painted the small 8×10” panel of this subject in less than a day. This canvas is ten times bigger. Ten times more paint. Probably a hundred times more brush strokes. What can be a simple pass with the brush on a small panel can take a couple of days with layering and repainting.

Big canvases are as different from a small panel as symphony orchestra is from a pub violinist. Their sheer complexity can be magic. Their successful execution can be a masterpiece. Oftentimes not. Sometimes you just have to scrape off the days work and start over the next day. Some big canvases can be painted in a week. Others can take months.

This one, a detail of a meadow in the Maitai Valley is the latter. I can see an end to it. I can see where it is going. It is still going to take another week or so to complete. Yet its price remains the same as any other of my canvases of the same size.

Ten times the size. Ten times the price. A hundred times the hours and effort?

Tough.

That is just the way it is. We are not paid by the hour. We are paid by our performance.

When it is finished it will be in gallery five. Tell me what you think.