By Aline Croupier MFA, BFA, GCSE (Art)
There are questions artists learn to accept, like a dull ache in the knee or England losing on penalties.
“Did you mean to do that?”
“Is it upside down?”
And of course, the perennial favourite, spoken with the furrowed brow of someone who once saw a Picasso tea towel:
“But why does it cost that much?”
In this article I shall attempt to clarify why my abstract images, which often feature “just some shapes” are, in fact, correctly priced. If anything, they are scandalously underpriced.
1. You Are Not Paying for What You Think You Are
To assume one pays for canvas and paint alone is like assuming a Michelin-starred meal can be priced by the kilogram. The work is not just the object. The work is also the years spent studying colour theory until ochre becomes a personality trait. The sleepless nights wondering whether ultramarine is sincere or just showing off. The 1,427 hours I have spent defending abstraction to dinner party guests with smart dental implants and strong opinions on Tracey Emin.
My paintings are priced not just as images, but as intellectual and emotional artefacts. They are weathered battlefields of meaning—rife with brushstrokes, broken rules, and metaphorical (and sometimes actual) blood and tears.
2. Historical Precedent and the Curse of the Rectangle
Historically speaking, abstraction has always been misunderstood until someone pays a fortune for it. Kandinsky was mocked, Rothko was told his work was “too sad for hospitals,” and Agnes Martin was once asked by a collector if she had made a mistake. Now, we treat these canvases like religious relics.
And yet I, standing in this noble lineage, am questioned by men in tight trousers suggesting they might be interested if I lower the price.
Let us be clear: abstraction is not randomness. It is not the absence of structure. It is a rigorous distillation of emotion, movement, memory, and formal tension into form—sometimes barely visible, but unmistakably deliberate.
Yes, it’s a rectangle. So is the Mona Lisa.
3. My Materials Are Actually Quite Expensive
That pale blue you see? It’s made from hand-ground pigment sourced from a remote Italian supplier who has not updated his website since 2007. That gold foil? Ethically sourced, ruinously fragile, and seemingly designed to stick to everything except the painting. The varnish? Imported, obscure, and behaves like a temperamental nobleman when exposed to humidity.
And then there’s the studio rent, the archiving, the insuring, the courier fees, the inevitable therapy bill when someone says the word “decorative” in the wrong tone of voice.
4. Time Is Not Money. Time Is More Expensive.
There are pieces I’ve worked on for months—layering, scraping, painting over, listening to Mahler while doubting the very concept of yellow. Some are finished in hours, but only after years of arriving at the precise economy of gesture required to stop. Abstraction is not laziness. It is restraint. Ask any artist: it is infinitely harder to know when to stop than when to begin.
You are not paying for the hours it took to make the work. You are paying for the years it took to know how.
5. Scarcity and Emotional Risk
There are not many of my works. And yet the market rarely considers the value of emotional risk. Each abstract piece is a gamble: not everyone will understand it. Some may openly dislike it. One gallerist said one of my works looked “like Matisse had created it,” which I liked, until he added “after a head injury,” which I felt tipped over from art criticism into ill-mannered rudeness.
Every canvas I make is, essentially, a kind of personal stake in the cultural lottery. The price includes this quiet wager: that the future may look back and say, “Ah, now we see what she was doing.”
Conclusion: They Should Cost More
In sum, my abstract images cost so much because they are rare, intellectual, emotionally charged, historically situated, and more finely tuned than they appear. They are not décor. They are not mood boards. They are visual essays written in gesture and colour.
In fact, upon rereading this article, I am forced to admit: my works should cost more. I shall be adjusting my price list accordingly.