How are original paintings priced by artists?

Pricing an original painting is not arbitrary, though it can look that way from the outside. The key factors are consistent across practices even where the specific amounts vary considerably, and understanding them makes it possible to assess whether a given price is honest or inflated.

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Material cost

The most direct starting point is what the work cost to make. Genuine 24ct gold leaf costs substantially more than gold-coloured acrylic. Wood panels prepared with hand-made gesso using traditional recipes cost more and take longer than a thin stretched canvas from Amazon. An artist working with quality materials in an art studio has significantly higher production costs, and that's factored into the price.

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Studio time

For process-intensive work, a significant piece represents weeks or months of focused studio time. Some artists calculate a day rate; others work from a broader sense of what their time is worth relative to their market. Either way, that time is a real component of the price, and it is a chunk of their life dedicated to bringing something into the world that only they could create.

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Scale and career trajoectory

Larger works require more material and more time, and artists price accordingly, though not always in simple proportion to size.

Beyond production costs, an artist's price reflects where they sit in the market: exhibition history, collector base, demand for their work, and the accumulated evidence of the practice's significance. Artists raise prices as their careers develop because earlier work becomes scarcer and there's more collectors who are fighting for a limited amount of work. Buying earlier in that development means buying before that recognition is fully priced in.

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The direct purchase difference

Gallery or marketplace commission typically accounts for 40% to 50% of a work's retail price. Buying from an independent studio removes that layer. Within the same budget, that difference can be significant - the difference between a modest print and a genuine original.

The concerns running through all of Roman's work sit at the intersection between matter and consciousness, made urgent by a moment when what it means to be human is being steadily reduced to data and productivity. His work is available directly from the studio, across a range of formats and price points, each piece certified and documented by the artist.

‍David Roman's original paintings are available directly from the studio in Birmingham UK, across a range of formats and price points. The main medium used is genuine gold leaf gilded over intricate surfaces engraved with ornamental and figurative elements. The core theme of the work is reimagining the human spirit at a critical time when human value is rapidly reduced to data extraction.