In this episode, I answer a question about how long, on average, it takes for artwork to sell out of my gallery. Spoiler: it’s hard to say! The pace of sales is an important factor for artists and galleries to consider, however, and you should be paying attention so you can better control your inventory and pricing.
My experience is very much like yours but I only sell online. (I sell about 45 pieces per year but no brick & mortar will take my work.) Some pieces have sold within a couple of hours and some have taken years and I’d pretty much given up on them. I post “in progress”‘ images on Instagram and that generates some anticipation. Sometimes.
With most online galleries, you have the luxury of keeping things available for sale for a few years so I leave them up.
In a nutshell, my experience regarding how long it takes to sell art is a total crap shoot.
Any time from still in the bubble wrap on the gallery floor and waiting to be hung, or a year later ! 🙂
Thank you, Jason, for sharing; this was very interesting and useful.
I’m curious to know if you sometimes take artwork from the Scottsdale gallery to Pinetop or vice versa.
From an artist’s marketing standpoint, it is interesting to know how long you would expect to keep a piece before either selling it or giving it back to the artist. One does need to move inventory around, so planning for those moves can be helpful. Also, it is interesting to find that what is intimated here doesn’t necessarily jibe with statements made in a previous blog about how long to keep artwork that hasn’t sold. That conversation left me with the opinion that anything more than 2 years old should be destroyed or disposed of.
I sell my work directly online or in person. I’ve been an artist for 15 years & have had work sell from within a few days to 10 years later. No one seems to care about when I painted what or how much my style has changed (which would be a lot!). Collectors seem to fall in love with a piece and buy it. End of story.