Go Big
Paintings are getting larger. Should mine?
The question landed like a smack in the face. “Do you sell your little pieces?”
Yes, a man asked me this at a science-art event this year, and yes, I’ve been selling hundreds of my “little pieces” a year for many years now, sir. But to quote Carrie Bradshaw, I couldn’t help but wonder…should my paintings be bigger?
I live in the United States, where everything – people, houses, cars – tends to get bigger over time, and art is no exception. Although Americans have been making big paintings for years (think Jackson Pollock and Ellsworth Kelly), the switch over the past few decades from showing art in house-sized galleries to displaying it in cavernous convention centers seems to have injected a dose of steroids into many artists’ work.
But do paintings really need to be big to have impact? Many masterpieces are smaller than you might think. Iconic works like Hokusai’s The Great Wave off Kanagawa and Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring are under 16 x 20 inches, and Dali’s The Persistence of Memory is only 9 x 13 – or in American terms, just right for your guest bathroom.
I think some art does need to be big. Mark Rothko’s paintings have to be tall and wide enough that you can feel you could step into their hypnotic fields of color and light. Portraits by Chuck Close wouldn’t work at notebook size – their visual patterns need some distance to take effect. And Mickalene Thomas’ paintings of Black women are grandly scaled to literally and figuratively take up space in places traditionally dominated by the work of white men.
But not every work of art needs to be huge. One of the most amazing paintings I’ve ever seen, Richard Dadd’s The Fairy Feller's Master-Stroke, is about 20 x 16 inches, yet it compels your attention from across a crowded room, and rewards it richly when you get close. By contrast, Cecily Brown’s 2019 homage, Faeriefeller, is 71 x 67 inches. Sure it’s nice, but is it really 14.8 times nicer?
And then there’s me. It’s a long way from the pinnacle of the art world to where I make and sell my work, but these issues still concern me, as they do all working artists.
How big should a painting be? It all depends on context. A piece that’s a good size to hang over a normal person’s desk would be lost on the massive walls of a museum. Because most of my art is bought by normal people with average-sized homes, I have no plans to stop making “little pieces.” My best selling painting size is 11 x 14 inches, and I’m both too stubborn and too practical to stop doing something that works.
But lately I find myself wondering, what if my painting wasn’t hanging over someone’s desk? What if my work was installed in a massive, spectacular space? My art doesn’t have to be big to be good, but what if it was both?
I’ll leave the practical considerations (workspace, medium, price, transport, storage, storage, storage) that drive artists’ decisions on size for another day. Can I allow myself to think bigger, dream bigger, paint bigger?
In 2025, I plan to try.
In the meantime…
2024 isn’t over yet, and I still have one more event! You can find me on 14th Street between U and V Streets NW this Saturday, December 14 from 11-4, at the District Bridges Holiday Market
I also have a few pieces in The Glen Echo Holiday Art Show and Sale, which continues through January 5.
And you can find plenty of new paintings in perfect sizes for your home or office at my online shop.
If the mood hits, try going larger and see how you feel about it. I've always worked in a range of sizes and am pretty comfortable making a 12" x 9" painting as I am a mural on a 20 x 30 foot wall. However, I've always relished the opportunity to make smaller works feel larger and I think I've been pretty successful at that over time, based on comments I've gotten.
Art certainly doesn't have to be big but, like the examples you gave and others I've seen, it does work for certain concepts. Also, as a painter, one of the big differences I appreciate is how one's body is engaged on different levels between small and large works. There is a constraint of movement with small works that I love getting away from when I'm working on a larger scale. Everything about your senses is engaged in a different manner.
One of the biggest practical matters is storage of larger works. I tend to only make larger paintings for exhibitions that require them or if I happen to get a commission. At least with the commission, I know that's a guaranteed sale and I won't have to hold on to the work. Making larger works for exhibition can be tricky because there's no guarantee of selling them.
Michele, you can go big and should give it a try in 2025! The imagination is the limit and my bet is your art will find a home in a big big space on a big big wall!