I remember sitting in a dusty corner of a London auction house in the late nineties, watching a man in a bespoke suit weep over a landscape that looked like it had been painted by a very talented, very bored teenager. He was talking about the “spiritual transcendence of the era,” but let’s be honest: […]
I remember sitting in the back of a crowded auction room in Gloucestershire, watching a collector’s face go from pure triumph to absolute horror in the span of thirty seconds. He had just won a lovely oil on canvas—12 x 12 inches, 1994—for what he thought was a bargain, only to realize the final invoice […]
Oil on canvas, 60cm x 80cm, 1994. I remember a lovely landscape by a local painter that came into my gallery looking like it had been rescued from a damp basement. The collector was convinced he needed a specialist from London to perform a miracle, willing to pay a king’s ransom for what was essentially […]
I remember sitting in my gallery back in the late nineties, watching a young painter look absolutely shell-shocked after being told by a “consultant” that he needed to pay a five-thousand-pound exhibition fee just to get his work on the walls. He thought he was buying prestige, but he was actually just paying for someone […]
I remember sitting in the back of a crowded studio opening in the late nineties, watching a young painter try to explain to a serious collector why his portraits looked like they were carved from cheap wax. He was using a dozen different “specialty” flesh tints straight from the tube, convinced that the secret to […]
I remember sitting in the back of a lecture hall thirty years ago, watching a professor describe pigment theory as if it were a sacred, untouchable liturgy. He spoke about the “soul of the spectrum” while I sat there thinking about the actual, messy reality of a muddy landscape painting that wouldn’t sell because the […]
I remember sitting in my back office back in 2014, nursing a lukewarm gin and tonic while an artist I’d championed for a decade sat across from me, vibrating with a mixture of guilt and fury. She wanted out, but she was terrified that walking away would turn her into a pariah—or worse, that she’d […]
People love to talk about auctions as if they are these grand, democratic arenas of pure passion, where the best piece of art simply finds its rightful home through the magic of a raised paddle. It’s a lovely fairy tale, but after twenty-six years in the trade, I can tell you that’s nonsense. In reality, […]
If you ask a university professor about the movement, they’ll give you a lecture on light refraction and the rejection of the Académie. They make it sound like a polite revolution of aesthetics, but they completely miss the messy, commercial reality of how impressionism changed practice for the people actually trying to make a living. […]
I once watched a collector spend six thousand pounds on a stunning oil on canvas, 40cm x 40cm, 2022, only to watch him hang it nearly two feet above his mantelpiece like a misplaced afterthought. It was heartbreaking; he had bought a piece of soul, but he displayed it like a piece of cheap wallpaper. […]