No garage sale for this guy

Recently, my gallery called me about "Old Salt", one of my paintings that seems to get a lot of buzz and sells a number of prints/cards around here. A man from Houston had stopped in the gallery and wanted the painting, which was priced at $700, framed. (Actually the price is $800 but I had written the wrong price when I sent it to the gallery) The painting is a 20x26 in a 26x32 frame. He said his wife had seen the painting 3 or 4 years ago, so he knew it was old... and offered me $400 for it if I'd sell it then so he could bring it back to Houston the next day. First of all, the painting was not even a year old and had already won me prizes half that and is slated for another exhibition in Louisiana. But even if that were true and his wife really HAD seen it 3 years ago, he was asking for a price less that I'd sell it unframed.

I am amazed at how people believe artists are worth so little that they can bargain them down on their prices as if it were a garage sale. Yes, if a customer wants to purchase five paintings, like an engineer did in Chicago before I moved from that area, then I will give them a significant deal. My engineer collector got one painting free by the time she purchased all the pieces! (Many of them older work). Should a serious art collector think highly enough of a painting that they want to add the original to their collection, then why would they devalue it? I don't go to a car dealer and offer 30K for a 60K Benz on the showroom floor. I don't go call the doc and tell him I'll make an appointment right then, if he'd sell it to me for half the price. And I suppose, if I needed the sale to eat, then I would invoke my ancestoral endentured servant mode and sell my work at any price. But I don't. And I didn't.
 
Don't get me wrong. I am by far so-NOT and art snob. I don't price thousands on my work. I feel that my prices are fair. They've increased with the quality and demand. I sell regularly, though I do wish it were more, but these are hard times. I have often knocked 10% off my work if a client is struggling with the price. But I can't sell it for 60%, nor would I do business with someone who believed I should. Let me also add, since I seldom rant on this topic, that watercolorists are always getting short-changed in the art world... just look at any oil painting the same size in a gallery and then compare the prices. Watercolor is a medium that must be mastered in one's particular technique in order to create quality work. It is often considered the hardest medium to work within, much more difficult than oil (so they say). Why does it not demand the same prices you ask? So have many of us.
 
And, by the way, I won another award last night. (yay me!)