Putting a Price on Art

How do you place a value on art? As I'm working on price lists and a printed booklet for the Carmel Valley Art and Wine Festival tomorrow, I've been grappling with this question: how do you put a price on art?

The obvious answer is that a painting is worth as much as someone is willing to pay for it. True.

One way to do it is size, meaning any canvas this size will be 'x' number of dollars. Another way is by time, answering - How many hours did the painting take? How much is my time worth?

Those are all quantifiable, logical ways to put a price on a piece of art. But the more fleeting value is this - how does a piece of art make you feel? What emotions or memories does a painting evoke? And how much is that feeling worth?

As I'm new to the art scene, I'm just going to have to go with what I think that feeling is worth and what my wife thinks the feeling is worth. And if we disagree, we'll land somewhere in between. We'll see how it goes tomorrow.