How Original Paintings Are Priced: The Honest Answer

An original painting is priced on what the single object actually is: its scale, what it is made of, the mastery behind it, and the fact that only one of it will ever exist. There is no sticker formula, because a one-of-a-kind painting is not a product with a run. Once you can see the pieces that go into a price, the mystery falls away, and I'd love to walk you through them the way I would over coffee.

Does the size of a painting change the price?

It does, and here's the plain mechanism most artists never explain. Scale is measured by the linear inch, the height plus the width of the piece. That gives every painting the same consistent footing instead of a number invented on the spot. A larger surface asks for more material and more of the physical making, so size is a true input.

But bigger isn't automatically dearer. The linear inch sets the floor, and the object itself decides where it lands. A heavily built surface, or a rare material worked in by hand, can carry a smaller piece well past a larger, simpler one.

Why do the materials and the making matter so much?

Because in original work, neither is interchangeable. My work runs in two lines. My Narrative works are figurative oil paintings that tell a story, and they are detailed in a way a photograph of them never quite captures: faces, hands, small truths placed one tiny brushstroke at a time, hours and hours of them. My Material works are abstract, sculptural, mixed media, and no two are built from the same recipe. One surface might be carved mineral relief with a seam of gold uncovered inside it. Another might hold copper as it turns blue-green, or a piece of natural stone seated into the surface by hand. In my Sedona Earth collection, there is real ground from Sedona in the paint itself, so the place is present in the work, not just pictured. What a specific piece is made of, where that material came from, and how it behaves on the surface all live inside its value.

Am I paying for the hours?

No, and this is the part I most want to be honest about. The hours are real. A Narrative painting can hold weeks of tiny, deliberate detail work, and some built surfaces cure on their own schedule and cannot be rushed. But an original is never priced by the clock, because hours on one canvas say nothing about what it took to be able to make it at all. What lets a passage look effortless is every year of practice that came before it. You're paying for mastery. The hours are simply where the mastery shows.

Why is original work priced by inquiry instead of a public number?

Because every original is its own object, and a shelf price would flatten exactly the things that make it worth having. Two paintings can measure the same linear inches and be nowhere near the same thing: one a quiet field of color, the other built up in layers and set with stone by hand. When you ask about a specific piece, you get a real answer grounded in that work's scale, its materials, and its singularity, not a vague dodge. And what you acquire is the only one of its kind, made by hand, documented from the studio, with the artist reachable for as long as the work is yours. That isn't a premium bolted on. It's the nature of the thing.

How is a commissioned painting priced?

On the same principles, decided together instead of discovered after the fact. The scale, the materials, and the plan are chosen in conversation, so the price grows out of the piece we're actually planning. It's the most collaborative version of everything above, and it's how I work with private collectors and interior designers across Scottsdale and the greater Arizona market. If you have a wall in mind, that's where the conversation starts, and the commissions page walks through how it works.

If a particular piece has stayed with you, ask me about that piece and I'll give you a real answer. And if you'd like to see new work before it goes out into the world, my Collector's Circle door is always open.

Dani