Careful What You Wish For, Part 2

Gallery goers like sensible shoes

Remember what I said about my two pictures in the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition? No? I said:

The validation is the main thing, of course, but I'm hoping for a few sales, too, although that will truly be icing on the cake. I've declared them both to be in an edition of 50, and will be asking a very modest £75 for an unframed, signed and numbered print. I took the advice from One Who Knows that people visiting the show and looking for a takeaway are more likely to go for small, attractively-priced prints, than a wall-sized canvas in the price-bracket of a new car.

Well, the One Who Knew was right. In spades. It turns out that by mid-afternoon on so-called "Buyers' Day" on Friday all 50 copies – fifty! – of one of my pictures had been sold, and the other was selling well, too.  I knew this because I was getting emails from disappointed would-be buyers wondering whether, you know, I might have any spares knocking about? I have rarely been assaulted by such an exotic mix of feelings. Disbelief, astonishment, gratification, alarm, confusion, exultation, bafflement... I mean: FIFTY copies of one image sold in a few hours, from the premiere art show in London. Cor...

So I went up to see one of the Private Views of the show myself this afternoon, first going round with my son and then with my daughter (you're restricted to one guest at a time), and we were able to bask in the sense of occasion and, well, achievement. I have to say, it's an unaccustomed pleasure, this reversal of the normal roles where, if you are as lucky as we have been, as proud parents you get to watch and applaud as your children pick up the prizes that mark an auspicious start in life. But it's nice to be able to make your children proud in return: not just to be selected out of some 14,000 aspirants to hang work democratically and anonymously next to the great names of British art, but then so quickly to collect all those red dots!

The pictures above mine are by some bod called Quentin Blake

(the orange dots on the right are mega-dots for 10 sales...)

However, it's a sobering moment, too. I had set the edition of these two prints at what seemed a preposterously high 50, in order both to be able to play by the rules, sales-wise, and still have plenty left over to sell and distribute after the show. I also set the price attractively low in order, with any luck, to sell the few I needed to in order to cover my costs: the entry fee, the framing, the travel, and so on. But now, now I've got to organise the printing, packing, and posting of what may, by the end of the show's run, be approaching 100 items! Not to mention invoicing and collecting the money from the same number of individuals. Sigh.... Admittedly, the final payoff on such volume of sales is not negligible, even after the RA have taken their cut, but thank Hockney I didn't make it an "open" edition, which I nearly did, or I might be spending the next few months in the queue at the Post Office.

Clearly, Theresa May is not the only one to have a Cunning Plan backfire this week. I think I will have another go next year, but make the editions smaller, and the prices rather higher. So, should I get in again, at least I won't have made a logistical nightmare for myself. I also finally realise why those ludicrous prices have been attached to most of the work on show: no-one actually wants the hassle of selling more than two or three things a year. I'm an artist, darling, not an eBay merchant!