I remember sitting in my gallery back in 2004, staring at a stack of twenty-two wildly different oil on canvas works, all roughly 40x40cm, 2004, from a painter who had just “found their voice.” They were all technically brilliant, but they were a mess—a scattergun approach that left me with nothing to pitch to my […]
I remember sitting in my gallery in 2004, watching a young painter try to explain why his work looked like a mishmash of three different dead masters, convinced that “versatility” was his greatest selling point. He thought he was being clever, but to a collector, he just looked like he was having an identity crisis. […]
I remember sitting in the back of a cramped, overheated studio in 1998, watching a young painter turn a shade of violent crimson because a collector had suggested his color palette felt “unsettled.” Most people will tell you that learning how to give and take critique is about “emotional intelligence” or “nurturing your creative spirit,” […]
I spent twenty-six years watching artists walk into my gallery with a look of profound, misplaced confidence, only to have their eyes glaze over the moment I pointed out a structural failure in a canvas. They’ve been taught that art is a mystical, untouchable thing, which is exactly why they struggle with how to critique […]
Oil on canvas, 30x40cm, 2014. I remember staring at it in my back room, feeling that familiar, hollow knot in my stomach because I knew—and I knew my collectors would know—that the piece was dead on arrival. Most “experts” will tell you that a failing work is a spiritual crisis or a lack of technical […]
I remember standing in my gallery back in ’98, staring at a large-scale oil on canvas that a young, promising painter had brought in for a solo show. It was technically proficient, certainly, but it was exhausted. The artist had spent months scrubbing, layering, and correcting every microscopic imperfection until the soul of the piece […]
I remember sitting in the back of my gallery in 2004, watching a young landscape painter stare at a canvas for forty minutes as if waiting for the oil to whisper its secrets. He wasn’t looking for inspiration; he was terrified of making a mistake that might devalue the work. We’ve been sold this romantic, […]
I remember standing in the back of a crowded studio in the late nineties, watching a young painter try to force a sense of “prestige” into a landscape by hacking at the canvas with a heavy metal blade. He thought he was being expressive, but he was really just being messy, and frankly, he was […]
I once watched a young landscape painter—a lovely girl with talent that practically hummed off the canvas—spend nearly three hundred pounds on a set of “professional grade” sable brushes that were, quite frankly, nothing more than clever marketing and expensive handles. She thought the tool would bridge the gap between her skill and her vision, […]
I remember sitting in a drafty corner of my gallery in 2004, watching a collector stare at a landscape for twenty minutes, trying to sound profound about “the emotional resonance of the artist’s hand.” It was exhausting. People love to wrap themselves in the velvet curtains of art theory, but they often miss the point […]