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Maya stood in her small studio, surrounded by canvases stacked against the walls. The scent of turpentine hung in the air, sharp and familiar. She stared at the latest painting—a glowing landscape of ochre hills and violet shadows—and thought about the gallery owner’s email sitting unanswered in her inbox. What are your current prices? he had asked. A simple enough question. But for Maya, it was a trigger.
For years, she had priced her work just high enough to cover materials, sometimes not even that. Her friends told her she was undervaluing herself. Her mentor had said, “Maya, if you don’t believe in the worth of your work, who will?” Still, every time she imagined asking more, her stomach clenched. She carried with her the voice of her father, who used to scoff at the idea of art as a “real job.” That voice whispered, Don’t be greedy. People won’t pay that much. Who do you think you are?
That afternoon, Maya opened her sketchbook and wrote down the numbers she wanted to charge, the ones that felt aligned with the hours, sweat, and love she poured into each canvas. She stared at them. Then she crossed them out and wrote smaller numbers. Then bigger. The tug-of-war exhausted her.
But something shifted the next day. She overheard a collector at a gallery show praising another artist’s work, marveling at how “worth it” the high price was because the piece made him feel something real. Maya realized that her fear wasn’t really about money—it was about visibility. Charging more meant standing fully in the value of her work, inviting people to see it as serious and lasting, not as hobbyist decoration. That terrified her. But it also excited her.
When the gallery owner called again, Maya took a breath and named her new prices—double what she had been charging. Her voice shook, but she didn’t backpedal. There was silence on the line. Then he said, “Good. That feels right. These works deserve it.” Relief flooded her body, but also something steadier: pride.
Within a month, two of her landscapes sold at the new price. The collectors didn’t flinch; in fact, they seemed to relish their purchases even more. Maya was astonished—and a little angry at herself for waiting so long. But mostly, she felt liberated.
Standing in her studio weeks later, Maya looked around at the canvases leaning against the walls. The studio hadn’t changed, but she had. Raising her prices had been more than a business decision; it was a psychological shift. She no longer saw her work as something tentative, something that might or might not matter. She saw it as a record of her deepest engagement with life.
As she prepared a new canvas, she noticed the blank surface didn’t intimidate her the way it once had. The fear had moved elsewhere, and with it, a new confidence. The price of her paintings was no longer a question. The worth of her art—of herself—felt claimed at last.