What people say they want vs what they actually buy

Two cycling friends are professional artists, one paints, the other works in clay.

Some of their pieces are really stunning, individual,  get a lot of comments on social media. What seems to sell are their more "run of the mill" pieces.

I guess you need to sell enough commercial pieces to be able to afford the arty individual stuff

They are all cool, but I think I would have bought the ones that were bought. Maybe because the ones that sold are interesting but not too challenging if you are worried about them staying on the wall for years. Also the ones that tie into places that people have been to, are maybe also easier to sell. I used to climb at the Roaches a fair bit, so that means more to me. The Bikini hill makes me think of the Moana film and thus the kids. The wife would probably have been bolder.

She sells sewing at craft fairs, and she has found the bigger fancier things don't tend to sell as people don't appreciate the hours of work and thus the price.

I wonder if at a different sale, different types would sell. So at a jazz festival vs a walking festival.

Your skills are truly impressive either way

Panda

There's a difference between looking at something in a gallery and looking at it your living room. What fits in one might not go well in the other

Posted by: andrewh

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There's a difference between looking at something in a gallery and looking at it your living room. What fits in one might not go well in the other

Very true - we've had a few conversations about art we really like but then it becomes "where would we put it?"

 I like those - anything that takes a landscape and puts a filter or effect on it has my attention. 

Maybe what people buy has a home/personal filter on it - I like vibrant graffiti or end wall murals but I wouldn't have a space in my home painted that way. Perhaps some also buy for what the art says or suggests to others. 

Do other people designing / making stuff get the same kind of reaction?

Look at most bikes.. we say we want efficient, comfortable, great handling yet most buy what looks good. The poise of a bike in a photo sells it. What fits us properly, what is efficient and comfortable for most riders (rather than the pros who drive race marketing) doesn't look like most bikes in a marketing shot. We can have good looking and good fit plus good structural design but sales and the mass market suggests working towards the latter 2 often comes at the expense of the looks, in most people's eyes. What we aspire to and what we need are rarely aligned. 

What panda said. I like them all. The ones that have personal resonance with me would be Alfred, Roaches and Corfe and Paris. I think some people like to look for a personal connection in art they buy, so that could steer things to the ones that sold. So I think it's less about which ones are challenging, but more about which ones connect with people. 

There is liking a painting and then having the painting on your wall in your house every day.  Let's say I liked your paintings above and told you they were great, they would not fit in my house at all so I would never buy one.

"I think some people like to look for a personal connection in art they buy" hits the nail on the head and is why I would have picked the Stonehenge one over the one pictured above it.

Interesting that there is a lot about personal connection. The Roaches was a commission from someone who saw Stone Henge and Corfe Castle and wanted a scene that meant something to him.

It makes it more of a challenge as an artist if you want to "paint to sell" as it is hard to find what will be a personal connection for a load of people who you have never met. King Alfred was my attempt at that as I was exhibiting in Winchester and there is a big statue of him in the car park.

Yeah, it's a challenge to connect to lots of folk, but I think King Alfred does it well for that location, and for anyone else who has a connection to Winchester, or has ridden the South Downs Way. There's probably quite a few of us on here who have set off at 6am, giving Alfred a friendly tap before heading to the beach at Eastbourne.

this is a whole thing in economics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revealed_preference

bleeds into politics - person in survey "I will vote for more funding for schools and hospitals", same person in ballot box: "votes for taxcut"

and tech - person in ux interview "I want to only see posts by my freinds in chronological order", what the person actually does: "doom scrolls tiktok"

I don't know if this is true or not, but I've heard a few times from different people

https://medium.com/@diogomarta/the-yellow-walkman-paradox-the-problems-with-asking-bad-questions-b5859fd2b136

Posted by: WorldClassAccident

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I know people say they want something bold and exciting and then buy something dull and normal instead, but I have just had a recent very clear example happen to me.

I'd say your evidence suggests something different!  People said they wanted something bold and exciting and that's what they bought!  Its just you've got a different interpretation of those words to other people.  The pieces that haven't yet sold - don't immediately strike me as unusual (except Alfred), whereas the ones that have sold are to me at least, a very different, bold and exciting way of representing the subject matter.  That's not to critcise the work you haven't sold yet, but to me they are actually just less novel than the stuff you did sell.

BTW if you took the Alfred concept and applied it to William Wallace or other Scottish "heros" and select the right galleries I think it would sell easily.  I'm not close enough to Alfred's place in history but there's probably somewhere that would resonate with.

I get this all the time at work. People ask, "What do you think about...?" So I tell them and then they're like, "Why are you always such an arsehole?"

It's a bit of a blend between the walkman problem and the problem of the pepsi challenge.  The Pepsi challenge was actually more about the question they asked than the format they asked it in.

They gave people a sip of Coke and a sip of Pepsi in a blind taste test - a significant majority preferred the Pepsi, and so they shouted as much in the ad campaign. 

But Coke stubbornly outsold Pepsi - it turned out Pepsi is sweeter and is more appealing in a single sip, but that's not how people drink it.  The sweetness got too much for most people when they drank it in real world quantities.

See also - "That's cool to look at for a bit" v. "I want that in my living room for 5 - 15 years"

And actually, both of them do a useful job for you, WCA - pieces to get people stopping at your booth to look and chat, and pieces that people want to walk away with afterwards.   You could have a small stock of the type that sell (under your table / in the van)  I'm guessing whether you're doing it for sales or not, it's nice to get your work on people's walls?

@WCA,

my wife paints for pleasure and has recently been trying her hand at Seascapes rather than Landscapes.

Im wondering if/how your technique above would transfer to a Seascape?

[i]Im wondering if/how your technique above would transfer to a Seascape?[/i]

I might give that a try. I chose the style so that I could paint any subject. I get bored easily when just doing the same type of thing repeatedly

Personally I wouldn't buy those.  They're not 'abstract' or 'pop art' enough for me to buy them.  And yes i have spent money this,year on such art.  

For me you're falling in the no mans land  between traditional and less traditional pieces.  I prefer your earlier work ive seen.  But thats just my opinion

I like them, but would realistically only have bought the ones of places I know.

I think there is a marketing thing (kind of mentioned earlier in this thread) where boutique clothe shops put the items in the window that will attract attention and get punters in to the store, but barely ever sell any of them. The stock they sell is displayed inside.

 I prefer your earlier work ive seen.  But thats just my opinion - It is your opinion that matters to me so I appreciate your remarks. I will continue with other styles. This was chosen specifically for the exhibition where it was agreed to produce a cohesive and similar set of paintings rather than my normal scattergun approach to style and form. It was the fact that I had a set of 10 paintings of the same style that allowed me to see the buying pattern quite so starkly.

I am still painting other styles and will not be defined by any one style.

Here's a first sketch of something I am working on at the moment for example - just blocked in the basic shapes, colours  and composition. I doubt it is commercial but reminds me of my childhood. I was in a place where we were celebrating Charles & Di with garden parties while I was listening to this and I first realised that when people said "them and us" I was probably a Them, not an Us and it angered me that the difference was quite so stark.

Paris one for me.  just shown them to the wife..... Paris one also.

quanta costa ??

PM'd you Ton with a very special price 🙂 

I'm waiting for the better cheaper AI version. (I'm not I'll be too tight to pay for that as well)

Here you go.

FYI - The statue is from the day after the Battle of Edington. Alfred's shield is down because he defeated the Vikings and made peace. His sword is inverted as a cross because he converted them to Christianity.

My painting is called the Night before Edington where his sword is raised and shield up as he rallies the troops before the battle 

The AI version appears to be a young man with three arms in a field

As a non-arty non-esoteric engineer...  I see some stuff that I think "wow, that's  wild, it's great". But then say "and it will look completely shite in my 1800s stone cottage. Then ask if there's something available depicting a hay cart in a stream, as its more fitting.

Posted by: MoreCashThanDash

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Two cycling friends are professional artists, one paints, the other works in clay.

Some of their pieces are really stunning, individual,  get a lot of comments on social media. What seems to sell are their more "run of the mill" pieces.

I guess you need to sell enough commercial pieces to be able to afford the arty individual stuff

"Safe" sells... It doesn't matter whether it's art, music, bikes or anything really... Look at all the brilliant bands or musicians that have never managed to break ranks of musical megastardom and earn a REAL wage out of their performances, and then look at the humdrum manufactured dross that gets packaged up by the likes of Simon Cowell and sold in its masses to people with no soul...

Look at how many bikes Specialized or Trek sell compared to some of the far more niche, interesting cycling brands that are pushing the envelope rather than staying in an incredibly safe zone and waiting to see what everyone else does first...

The general public is very risk averse and reluctant to make decisions that might be controversial, lest they be judged by their peers for being different... It takes someone different to actually stand up and say "sod that" and to follow their passions to stimulate actual creativity!