“You totally underpriced that one,” Miranda says lazily as she nods her head to the painting. It’s a thirty-by-thirty watercolor in a simple wooden frame painted a distressed gray. I’ve got it propped on a tabletop easel. It’s by far the biggest painting I’m displaying, and, frankly, it’s my best one too. I have six others remaining on the display wall behind us, with the hope I can tempt some art enthusiast to give my work a shot.
The Misty Harbor Music and Art Festival is a great way to start summer and serves as the official opener to the short tourist season we have here. We’re not big enough to have just a music festival. Even less people are interested in art than music so they got thrown together, but it’s a pretty fun time. Various artisans set up booths where everything from art to cupcakes can be bought while bands alternate on an elevated stage on the town square.
I’ve participated in this event as an art vendor for the past six years—ever since I graduated from college. It was only then I felt I had the necessary chops to exhibit my work, because even though I’d been painting since I was a kid, it was only having an art degree behind my name that gave me the confidence to show my stuff to the public. Each year, I’ve made some money. Some years were better than others, but no artist truly does it for the money. I mean, it’s great to have the extra cash because teachers make squat, but I know I’ll never be rich from my art. And that’s fine by me, as I never had those aspirations. For me, life is exactly perfect. I live in a community I love, have family and friends close by and a kick-ass job where I get to pursue my passion every single day. I couldn’t want for more.
“Underpriced?” I ask as I turn my head to Miranda. “It’s not even been seriously looked at all day. I should be cutting the price, particularly because I didn’t glass it in and the frame is pretty cheap.”
I had opened for business at ten AM. Miranda met me here at nine to help me set up, so now we’re just relaxing in a pair of ratty beach chairs she’d brought along, waiting for my more potential customers to perhaps saunter by. I’d sold four paintings so far, but they were small and only thirty bucks a piece. It was getting close to dinnertime, though, and things would really start to get busy soon.
“It’s magnificent and you know it,” she returns dryly, her eyes flicking to the painting and back to me again. “And glass is easy to add. People aren’t purchasing that frame. They’re purchasing the art inside. It is merely for display so it can rest on the easel.”
She’s right about that, and it’s a lot nicer looking than just the painting, which is done on watercolor paper taped to a board. Right now, it looks pretty nice as it sits on the easel at an angle, so I can clearly see it from where I’m sitting. And truth be told, it’s probably my best work so far. It’s of the Gray Birch Lighthouse. I did it a few weeks ago, inspired perhaps by the fact I’d stared at that old lighthouse a lot knowing that it was now inhabited by a sexy, mysterious man. But he really has nothing to do with the painting itself, for he’s not in it. I just happened to catch it one morning as the sun was rising on the Atlantic, so there are swirls of orange, pink, and yellow stacked on top of a grayish-purplish ocean. That’s all in the background. The focal point is the lighthouse as the white stucco exterior soaked up the colors of sunrise, even reflecting off the glass panes surrounding the light at the top. I made the frame myself, including the distressed gray paint job, and priced it for one hundred and fifty dollars, which I thought was reasonable. Sadly so far, no one was interested in shelling that out.
“I bet no one is even looking at it seriously because it’s underpriced,” Miranda suggests. “You need to give it a price that proclaims to the entire world that the buyer is getting a priceless piece of art.”
I stare at her for a moment, seeing she’s not bullshitting me, and I figure she might be on to something and I really didn’t have anything to lose.
Scrambling out of my seat, I round the table and pluck up the little index card resting at the base of the easel where I had carefully printed the price in black sharpie. As I crumple the card up, I move back around the table, sit on my chair, and reach under the table where I’d put my purse. Nabbing my black sharpie and some extra index cards out, I carefully print out a new price after tossing the old card into my purse.
“How about… two hundred?” I ask just as I finish the last zero on the price.
“Still too low,” Miranda says.
With a huff, I toss that card into my purse and poise the marker above a fresh one. Turning my head, I look to my best friend in the world and ask her, “What should I ask for it?”
“Three hundred and fifty dollars,” she says earnestly. Firmly. With total belief that I can get that for my work.
It’s one of the many reasons I love her.