As I blab on this list I'm also painting a bathroom. The materials cost me about $100, almost the same as for making a modest-sized painting. My paintings are priced, following the tradition, more or less by the square inch, with allowances for this and that. I'm not a minimalist, all-overist but that's how I'm doing the bathroom -- one color for walls, another for woodwork, without brushmarks, textures, flourishes. So if this were a painting, and allowing for the differences between it and my "signature style" (another dumb notion of gallerists) and established prices for my usual size work, my bathroom "piece" should be worth a ton of money, at least a new Honda or some such. But I'm afraid it's not worth even half of what a drunken decorator would charge because I'm not a bonded decorator and my wife says I drip paint. But this bathroom painting is taking a lot of my energy and thought -- all the same musings I have in my studio, etc., as I dip my brush into the gallon of Benjamin Moore Super duper semi-gloss. So in my mind I'm the same person painting a bathroom as I am painting a canvas in my studio. So am I doing a work of art or no? Is the difference merely one of social category, unidentifiable aesthetic experience, my intentionality, what?
Damit, when I'm done with this job I'll simply say it's worth twenty grand and then have a fat glass of wine. Am I wrong? WC
