If you think you need a velvet rope, a private concierge, or a six-figure windfall to begin learning how to start a new collection, you’ve been listening to the wrong people. For years, I watched well-meaning clients walk into my gallery with a sense of profound inadequacy, convinced that unless they were buying a blue-chip […]
I remember a Tuesday afternoon in 2008, standing in the back storage room of my gallery, staring at a crate of oil on canvas, 120cm x 150cm, 2006, that had arrived from a visiting artist’s studio. The paperwork was a mess, the insurance rider was non-existent, and I realized with a sinking feeling that if […]
People often treat hiring an art adviser like they’re seeking an audience with a high priestess, expecting some mystical ritual involving velvet ropes and whispered secrets. It’s a ridiculous notion. Most people think they need an adviser to grant them access to the “inner sanctum,” when in reality, they just need someone to stop them […]
Oil on canvas, 40cm x 50cm, 2014. I remember a particular landscape from a young painter I represented back in the nineties; the brushwork was soulful, the color palette was sophisticated, but the piece was shoved into a flimsy, off-the-shelf plastic frame that looked like it belonged in a high school hallway. I watched a […]
If you’ve spent any time scrolling through YouTube or browsing expensive masterclasses, you’ve likely been fed the lie that a “complete guide to landscape painting” consists entirely of learning how to blend a perfect sunset or master the translucency of a lake. It’s nonsense. I spent twenty-six years watching collectors walk past technically flawless vistas […]
I remember a man in my gallery back in ’98—oil on canvas, 40x60cm, 1996—who spent forty minutes lecturing me on the “spiritual resonance” of a piece, only to realize five minutes after he’d swiped his card that the scale was entirely wrong for his dining room. He wasn’t alone; he was just the most vocal. […]
I remember sitting in my back office in 2014, staring at a stack of printed catalogs and feeling a profound sense of relief that the “old way” was still intact. Back then, if you wanted to see a painting, you had to physically stand in a room with it, smelling the linseed oil and seeing […]
I once spent a rainy Tuesday afternoon in my gallery staring at a series of exquisite, moody landscapes that were all titled Untitled No. 4, No. 5, and No. 6. I watched a serious collector walk straight past them, eyes scanning for something—anything—to grab hold of. It wasn’t that the work lacked soul; it was […]
I remember standing in the back of a crowded, humid studio in the late nineties, watching a young painter weep because her latest series looked like muddy, grey sludge instead of the ethereal light she’d intended. She had spent a fortune on “professional grade” materials, but she was fundamentally misunderstanding her physics. Most people treat […]
Stop wasting your money on those “Masterclass” charcoal sets or the thirty-piece graphite kits that promise a professional finish before you’ve even learned to hold a tool. I spent twenty-six years watching well-meaning people walk into my gallery with expensive supplies and absolutely zero ability to translate what they see onto a page. The truth […]