MAKING A MARK

Many of who grew up with rampant inflation still have it factored into our brains as a really sound reason as to why prices rise. However, if you exclude house prices, general consumer prices have not moved much in recent years. In fact, we've been living through a time of extremely low inflation. It almost went negative at one point! I came across a very handy calculator online - the Historical UK inflation rates and calculator (which uses Office for National Statistics figures) - which calculates what a value in a specific year would be worth in today's values.

TIP: If you're having problems selling your paintings, why not try checking back to when you were achieving sales and checking prices you charged then to the ones you are charging now, Put another way, what are you going to do if you increase your prices because you get taken on by a gallery - and then get dropped by that gallery a year later because your paintings are not selling, It's not just music companies who take a hard look at the talent in relation to numbers!

TIP: Aim to set an upward trend in terms of exhibitions, sales and prices - but don't over-reach on price such that it has a negative effect on exhibitions and sales. Do NOT try and be a one hit wonder! Use the change in status to raise your profile and anything and everything in your marketing that helps to promote more sales.

After all sales are what generate income, not price increases! There are all sorts of things that create value in the marketplace. Perception of value helps to generate market value - and it can be very difficult to change perceived value. Perceived value is also not the same as real value - which is why we get fluctuations - especially if the latter can be validated through other means. Perceived value in the secondary market has a major influence on current real value in the marketing of new artwork for sale.

BUT you can change perceived value if you change the way you frame your watercolours so they look more like oil paintings! ALWAYS valued higher than artwork by women in the marketplace. This is an extract from an NYT article from 2005 which provides a very neat synopsis of the issue and the problem. Take two contemporary artists, Damien Hirst and Rachel Whiteread, who both came to prominence in the 1990's as so-called Y.B.A.'s: Young British Artists.

Both have won the Tate museum's Turner Prize: Ms. Whiteread in 1993 and Mr. Hirst in 1995. And both have made their way into high-profile collections. Next week Christie's is offering an important early sculpture by Ms. Whiteread, a fiberglass and rubber cast of two mattresses from 1991, which has been on extended loan to the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin. According to conventional wisdom, the value of an artist's work increases when she has shows in prestigious museums. The X Factor: Is the Art Market Rational or Biased,

However, art advisers often don't actually "know" the value of artwork in an objective and validated way - just that they are believed to "know more" than the knowledge of the collector. Buyers in other investment markets would not approach any major purchase without a team of highly vetted and professional advisors. In the art market, however, it has been common for buyers to rely on reputation, personal judgement and opinion.

Even in areas where forensics, science, legal and other due diligence are available, collectors have often deferred to promises and the opinions of advisors. The implication is that in order to increase your perceived worth in the secondary marketplace you need to have the backing of those with some sort of standing.

This supports the theory that there is much more to collecting art than following the simple conventional rhetoric of “just buying what you like and selling what you don’t”. Prices in a capital city are often perceived to be higher than those in the provinces - however, an artist needs to sell at the same price everywhere. Why would an art collector pay a premium for buying in (say) London when they could buy directly from the artist or their galleries in the provinces,

TIP: Artists should aim to monitor and manage the influence on the perception of the value of their artwork. The value of paintings is determined by whether or not they sell. In other words, the price is the sale price, not the asking price. For all the experts and connoisseurs and scholars and analysts, when it comes right down to it, the price of a work of art is based on what buyer and seller agree it's worth, and that's all. The X Factor: Is the Art Market Rational or Biased, I collate all information about pricing art in section on How to Price your art on my website. How important is price when buying art,