Oil Painting | Art Painting | Blog on Oil Paintings

A properly chosen painting can essentially increase in value in just a few years. And it is not as hard to choose a piece of art fitting in this category as it might seem at first.

Before investing any substantial amount of money in paintings, you should consider:

• Why is there a difference in the price for different paintings?
• How to choose a painting that will eventually increase in value?
• What is the right price to pay for the painting and not overpay?
• What factors influence the cost of a painting?

These and other questions are what you will have to consider when you want to buy a painting, be it to change or add to the decor of your house and / or to make a wise investment for your hard earned money.

The difference in price of paintings can be astonishing. For two almost identical paintings (the canvas, oil) in different places you could be asked to pay from $500 to $5000. How do you make the right choice in a situation like that? Often buyers simply don’t recognize the factors that price consist of. In the best-case scenario when you know an artist personally and you are buying a painting directly from him or her - the price practically equals the expenses of the painting. But it is not often that you would personally know a painter, although with the increased convenience of the internet these days, buying directly from painters are more possible.

If you buy a painting from an art gallery, the price is influenced by a number of factors. First of all - rent of the gallery space: the majority of galleries are located in nice places therefore have high rent; Salary of employees of a gallery who carry out the exhibitions; Cost of advertising (including expenses for posters, catalogs, invitations to opening of exhibitions, etc); Financing other non-commercial art projects, and many other things. You will have to pay at least twice as much than if you buy a painting from the painter directly.

Having said this, there are benefits to buying from an exhibition or through an art gallery. These places will generally offer you works of art that have already gone through preliminary selection and tough competition. You know for sure it is a good investment.

If you are buying a painting directly from an artist, all you can do is basically rely on your own taste and on some attributes of professionalism and success of the artist. For example, it is relevant to know whether the artist has had art education. Certainly there are some talented self-educated artists, but they are very rare.

There are some other questions you may want to ask your artist. For example:

• Do they have any works exhibited in large museums?
• Are they a winner of any art competitions?
• Where was their recent exhibition? A list of exhibitions will tell you a lot about him or her.
• Whether they a catalog of exhibitions, posters, booklets and other advertising material?
• Do they have a professional looking website? A good website is also a sign of professionalism. Certainly not all talented artists have their own websites but most of them do.

If you are buying from a gallery or other reseller, it doesn’t hurt to ask them to point to you those artwork that are likely to rise in value in the near future or to tell you which of the artists they see as having potential to succeed.

If you have problems with going to galleries and attending the opening days you can do everything online. Search in Google or in any other catalog under the category “art” and look at the personal websites of the artists. You will definitely be able to obtain a lot of information online.  The only problem I see is that sometimes online you can’t really see what the painting really looks like in real life. To minimize this disadvantage, make sure you ask for a large picture of the painting so that you can see it in detail on your computer. Usually if you like what you see on the computer screen, the original painting will not disappoint you but like anything else, there will be that odd exception from time to time.