St. George Arts Festival

For the second straight year, Valerie will be participating in the St. George Arts Festival. It is scheduled for April 2nd and 3rd, next Friday and Saturday. The weather in St. George can be very warm and spring-like at the beginning of April. In fact, tomorrow it is supposed to be 76F and sunny there. Unfortunately, the weather in St. George can also be cold and wet and windy at the beginning of April. Last year it was cold and wet. Those conditions really seemed to dampen the croud and kept art sales to a minimum. We are hoping for better this year. The forecast has it at partly to mostly sunny with highs in the low sixties. Should be OK, if we can get it. Of course, the worst possible conditions involve high winds. They are not in the forecast for this year's event, but they did cause considerable damage to Valerie's equipment a couple of years ago: A strong gust overnight picked up her tent and flung it into her neighbor's display, causing damage to both of them, but almost destroying Valerie's. Fortunately, Grandpa was able to rebuild it.

18th Annual Braithwaite Art Auction

We've been donating more paintings than we've been selling this year. The latest was this little gem, called South on Center. Valerie donated it to a March 3rd auction benefitting the Braithwaite Gallery at SUU. The gallery is raising money to build a new art museum on campus (the Southern Utah Museum of Art), which should be great for the area. Last time we were at the Braithwaite, to see the Jim Jones show, we saw a mock-up of the new museum. The gallery director, Reese, said that they were still haggling a little over the final design, but it looks like it will be a beautiful space. In any case, Valerie's painting drew a number of bidders during the live auction, and it eventually sold for a good price—a little above what we might normally expect to get. That is an encouraging sign since it gives some indication that art buyers find Valerie's work to be priced competitively.

Bryce Canyon Paint-Out

Last week, The Gallery at Clarke's sold this little painting, entitled Down Hole-in-the-Rock Road. Next week, Valerie is joining the gallery manager, Irene, for a plein air expedition to Bryce Canyon. Valerie has successfully painted winter scenes of Bryce Canyon in the past; the best of which is called Snowy Canyon Rim, painted in 2007. Look for it on her webpage. There are certain difficulties involved with plein air painting and, in the southwest, those normally involve wind and dust. But, painting in Bryce Canyon in February may bring with it some cold fingers. Hopefully it will also produce some fine art.

Artisans Fund Raiser

Last night, the Cedar City Artisan's hosted a fund raiser in their new gallery at 150 West Center Street in Cedar City. Valerie donated this painting to the money raising raffle. She left the event before the prizes had been claimed, but we'll be interested to learn about the lucky winners. Heck, this one is so nice, we'd like to show it in our own home. The painting is called Road to Midway, and it was painted during last summer's Wasatch Plein Air event in, you guessed it, Midway, Utah.

Why is Fine Art Expensive—Part 3, Unique Products

We are occasionally asked why fine art is so expensive. People have asked, for example,“How much does a piece of canvas and a tube of paint cost? It can’t be more than a few dollars for the materials.” There is more to it than materials, however, and I can think of three things. First, running a small business involves overhead; second, making an oil painting requires specialized skill; third, the final product is unique. In parts one and two, I discussed overhead and skill, this article is about the third idea, unique products.

In May of 2008, Christie’s sold a Thomas Moran painting called Green River of Wyoming at auction for almost 18 million dollars. Eighteen million! For a Thomas Moran! During a recession! Why can a painting like that command such a price? Because there will never be another one. It is the only one in the world, a one-of-a-kind beauty, painted by a man who died in 1926. I’d really like to have that painting myself, but so would everyone else, and someone is willing to pay more than I could ever afford.

What about paying that kind of price for the work of a living painter? Can’t we expect that they will produce many more similar pieces? Yes and no. It is true, of course, that living painters generally command less for their work because fresh paintings by them are neither rare nor unexpected. It is not true, however, that any painter will paint forever, and, if you see something from their easel that shows them clearly at the top of their game, you can count on owning an exceedingly rare and unique object.

In our experience, it can often be worthwhile for an artist to create pre-painting studies or post-painting copies of an outstanding scene. We have done that in some cases, such that there are two or three works with very similar subject matter that have been sold separately. I suppose that each study or copy that is sold can slightly diminish the value of the original full-sized work, but the thing to keep in mind is that even the study is a hand-made item. The study is not a photocopy, is not a scan, is not mass-production duplicate. It is, instead, a hand-made object with all that implies. It has unique brushwork, paint choices, and even mistakes. In short, it remains a one of a kind piece of art.

Prints, on the other hand, are not made by hand. Prints are prints. Whether they are called giclees, limited edition prints, or posters, they are all machine-made. They are imaged, scanned, or machine-copied and are available for mass-production. As a result, they should be priced accordingly. They may be perfectly nice objects, but they are not unique. In our business, we have done a small amount of imaging and have attempted some giclees. We have not, however, generally been happy with the quality of the product and have sold very few of them. In any case, they are not expensive and will never command the price of an original.

I sometimes joke with art buyers that the painting they are buying from Valerie will become much more valuable tomorrow if Valerie is hit by a truck today. Not very funny, really, but it illustrates my point. Fine art is expensive because it is unique. It is a one-of-a-kind, hand-made object. There will never be another one like it. And, in about a hundred years, if you hang on to one of Valerie's peices, it might even be worth $18 million.