Stop listening to the romanticized nonsense about the “starving artist” finding inspiration in a drafty, overpriced loft in a gentrifying warehouse district. There is nothing poetic about a damp ceiling that ruins a £3,000 canvas or a landlord who views your creative practice as a mere tax write-off. When artists start searching for how to […]
I remember standing in the back of my gallery in 2004, watching a young, talented painter try to explain to a serious collector why his landscape looked more like a bruised plum than a sunset. He had spent three years mastering brushwork but hadn’t spent three minutes mastering his pigments, and frankly, the lack of […]
I remember sitting in my back office in 2004, nursing a lukewarm espresso and staring at a stack of invoices while a particularly talented painter sat across from me, looking absolutely gutted because he thought he’d been “ghosted” by a dealer in London. He thought he hadn’t been “professional” enough, when the truth was far […]
I remember sitting in my gallery office in 2012, nursing a lukewarm Earl Grey, while a young painter called me in a state of absolute hysterics. One of his canvases had just “flipped” at an auction house for five times his original retail price, and he was convinced he was finally going to be able […]
I remember sitting in the back of a drafty, unheated warehouse in East London back in the late nineties, watching a brilliantly talented painter try to explain to a potential collector why he couldn’t find the invoice for a sold landscape. He was surrounded by masterpieces, but he was drowning in a sea of loose […]
If you go searching for a “complete guide to watercolour” online, you will be buried under a mountain of expensive, professional-grade pigment recommendations and lectures on the “spiritual connection” between the artist and the water. It’s exhausting. I spent twenty-six years in a gallery watching young artists sink hundreds of pounds into the most prestigious […]
I remember a client in 2014—bronze, 45cm, 2012—who spent forty minutes swooning over the texture of a piece, only to realize three weeks later that it wouldn’t actually fit through his front door. It is a classic, avoidable tragedy. Most people approach the market thinking that once they’ve mastered the nuances of canvas and pigment, […]
I remember sitting in the back of a dimly lit studio in 2004, watching a young painter struggle with a massive, textured oil on linen, 120cm x 150cm, 2004. He had spent a small fortune on professional-grade, high-tech floodlights, yet the painting looked like a muddy, lifeless mess under the glare. He was convinced that […]
I remember sitting in my back office in 2008, staring at a stack of crumpled invoices and a notebook that looked like it had been through a war, trying to figure out if a particular landscape piece had actually sold or if I’d just imagined the commission. Most people will tell you that you need […]
If you search for a “complete guide to acrylic painting” online, you’ll mostly find two things: expensive, color-coded tutorials for hobbyists and glossy marketing fluff that suggests you need a thousand-dollar set of tubes to be taken seriously. It’s exhausting. I spent twenty-six years watching artists struggle because they were taught how to mix a […]