Underpainting, and why your greens look dead
Inés and a Lisbon landscape painter talk through underpainting, why mixing green from the tube kills a painting, and the warm ground that changed both of their work.
Pricing a canvas when nobody taught you how
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Show notes
Pricing a canvas when nobody taught you how
Nobody teaches painters how to price. Inés brings together a painter in Mexico City who sells straight from her studio and a gallerist in Madrid who has priced hundreds of first shows, and asks them to explain the numbers out loud.
- Pricing by size, and why it works even though it feels wrong
- The rule about never going down once you have gone up
- What a gallery's 50 percent actually pays for, and when it does not
- Selling from the studio without undercutting your own gallery
- The painting Inés sold too cheaply and still thinks about
Write in with the price you charge for a small canvas. Inés will read some out, anonymously, next time.
Transcript
Welcome back to Wet Paint, Open Window, I am Inés Garrido. This week we are talking about money, which painters are famously bad at discussing, so I have brought two people who are not. From Mexico City, a painter who sells almost everything straight from her studio and has turned down three galleries. From Madrid, a gallerist who has priced more first exhibitions than she can count. I am going to ask them the questions I was too embarrassed to ask at 25. How do you price by size without feeling like a butcher. What does the gallery's fifty percent actually buy you. And can you sell from the studio without undercutting the people who represent you. I will also confess the painting I sold for far too little, which still hangs in a dentist's waiting room. You are listening on Witspeak Podcasts.
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