I remember a young oil painter—talented, bright-eyed, and utterly penniless—who came into my gallery in 2004 with a series of large-scale canvases that looked magnificent under the spotlights. Six months later, a collector called me, distraught, because the pigment was flaking off the support like dry skin. He hadn’t just lost his money; he’d lost […]
I remember sitting in my back office in 2004, staring at a beautiful, large-scale oil landscape that a regular collector had just returned. The artist was devastated, but the truth was much uglier: the paint was literally flaking off the surface because the foundation was rubbish. Everyone tells you that the magic happens in the […]
I remember sitting in the back of a dusty studio in 1994, watching a young painter attempt to justify a four-figure price tag on a series of works that looked suspiciously like failed watercolors. He was trying to lecture a collector on the “mystical layering properties” of his medium, but any seasoned eye could see […]
I remember sitting in the back of a dusty studio in 1994, watching a young painter attempt to control a wash that was clearly winning the argument. He was treating his pigments like they were obedient soldiers, when in reality, he was dealing with a liquid medium that has its own stubborn, unpredictable temperament. Most […]
I remember sitting in the back of a crowded studio in the late nineties, watching a young painter weep because his oil landscape had turned into a muddy, grey mess after a week of improper layering. He’d been told that oils were the only “serious” medium for a professional, a romantic notion that ignored the […]
I once stood in a client’s sunroom, staring at a landscape that cost four thousand pounds, only to realize the surface was spider-webbing into a thousand tiny, hideous cracks. The artist had been so caught up in the “soul” of the piece that they’d completely ignored the physics of the medium. People love to treat […]
I remember sitting in the back of a dusty studio in 1994, watching a young painter spend three hundred pounds on “professional grade” pigments only to have the entire surface crack and delaminate within six months because he hadn’t grasped the most basic mechanics of the medium. Most art schools will feed you a romanticized, […]
Stop waiting for a patron to descend from the heavens or for some prestigious academy to hand you a certificate of legitimacy. Most people think that learning how to start painting seriously involves buying the most expensive linen canvases or finding a mentor who will whisper sweet nothings about your “vision.” That is absolute nonsense. […]