Art by the hour, pound or square foot

In November of 2013, I was commissioned to do a large 7′ x 9′ painting to occupy a particular wall in a large condo downtown. I normally just paint for fun so i was intimidated by such a large canvas! The client gave a lot of direction; color schemes, emotional or historical themes to consider. After months of intermittent sketching and painting smaller studies we arrived at a theme. A sketch of the abstract intertwined, twisting figures caught the client’s eye and he exclaimed ‘that’s it.’ I was just happy to have a direction after so long. I sketched it out and reverted to my obsession of amphitheaters and plazas to use as a backdrop. This was hopefully to give the image some depth and a dynamic aspect. I struggled and seemed to work backwards a lot. I was curious; ‘How long would a painting like this take? — So I counted every hour of laying out (drawing) and painting once the theme was decided. It took 220 hours. This does not include time I spent looking at it wondering what to do. This is brush on canvas time. Just interesting and people always ask! The painting seemed to be at an acceptable point at my deadline of 220 hours and the client was genuinely happy.