What Happens To Art When Pigments And Tariffs Get Expensive

Your art practice can handle critique, revisions, and the occasional creative block. Sticker shock at the paint aisle is a different kind of test. We’re seeing the price of art supplies climb across the board, and it’s not just a small bump. From acrylic paint to quality stretched canvas, the numbers are changing fast enough that artists have to rethink how they stock up, what they buy, and how they price their work.

We walk through what we’re noticing on the ground: visiting multiple stores, comparing the same items, and watching “normal” prices drift upward. We get specific about canvas costs at different sizes and why the cheapest option can be a bad deal when you’re selling a finished piece to the public. If you care about longevity, durability, and a painting that still looks good decades from now, material grade matters, and we talk honestly about where we’re willing to compromise and where we’re not.

Then we zoom out to the bigger forces that may be pushing prices higher: global inflation, supply chain slowdowns, and the fact that many art materials depend on imported pigments, chemicals, and components. Import costs and tariffs can show up in surprisingly direct ways at checkout. We also share practical, no-drama strategies to keep your supply costs fair: shop across three to four retailers, look for real promotions, and avoid getting pulled in by marketing hype that doesn’t improve the final result.

If you’ve been wrestling with rising canvas prices, expensive acrylics, or limited stock, you’ll leave with clearer context and smarter next steps. Subscribe, share this with an artist friend, and leave a review with the biggest price increase you’ve seen lately.

After 18 Years as a local Cleveland Artist my latest adventure is sharing my Artwork, Paintings and providing a voice to the millions of people looking for help and advice all related to the Art Business, Shows, Events, Marketing, Selling Art and all other hot topics that help people find their path and way in the Art World.

Transcript

Prices Climb Across Art Supplies

SPEAKER_00 0:00

A lot's going on with um art supplies and art materials, canvas, paint, the whole nine yards. And what's happening is the raw materials, the cost for the raw materials keep going up. They keep rising. And there's seems to be some kind of uh supply chain issue with the way the supplies are coming in, because I've gone to three different stores now, and the amount of money I would spend on normal, uh really good, high-quality acrylic paints have gone up. And um, some people are claiming it's inflation across the world, the total inflation that's going on. And a lot of people are talking about import costs and tariffs. Now, I can't speak, like I've always said, I don't get political on here. I'm just talking about art supplies. And let's say a normal canvas uh 20 by 16, a really good one would cost me$30 to$50. It's now a lot more. Let's say uh a canvas that's four feet, uh six feet, excuse me, by uh four feet, six feet wide by four feet high, uh that's costing, you know, anywhere's 125 to 150 bucks. And I used to be able to get those like 60, 70 for high quality canvas. Now, if you go to super low quality, uh you could still get something for like 20 bucks, 25 bucks, 35 bucks, 45 bucks,$55. But you got to remember when you're doing work for other people and you're selling the product, it has to be on pretty decent uh quality canvas. So I might go with medium grade now, and it's still pretty good high quality. But my point is the paints that used to cost you know$10,$20,$30 per tube per uh uh uh bottle is now costing a lot more, and I used to be able to get paints for like uh two to five dollars for the little tiny bottles, and uh they're going up, so there is a concern, a global uh uh chain supply chain issue, and uh tariffs going into place on certain supplies, and I went to three different stores and all the prices were up. Now, a couple other stores like Hobby Lobby were offering uh pretty decent prices on the low grade stuff. Uh so you can get a number of 14 by 11s for like$15. But remember what I said, it's got to be at least medium to high grade uh when you're selling to the public because you want it to last a long time. I want it to last, you know, 20 years, 25 years, 30 years. So uh high quality canvas. But um, so and and let me take a look at some of the issues. They're talking about the pigments, the materials, the chemicals, the actual paints. Um uh they were talking about you know, general inflation is a critical factor. And um uh a lot of the supplies are actually imported into this country. So the costs and the tariffs on those things on the imports are causing some problems, and so uh I still think if you're careful, if you go to three to four different stores, uh there might be some specials going on, there might be some marketing hype, there might be some opportunities, but you should still be able to pick up your supplies at a fair price. Not reasonable, but fair.