Modern Art

First, we must understand the medium of a print.  A print is any work of art made in multiple iterations, created through a transfer process. There are many different types of prints, and the process is constantly evolving, but the best-known technique in contemporary art is a screensprint. 

I migrated to New York City to become an art dealer. It was time to leave Mississippi, a cradle of love and predictability. Despite the turmoil in New York following the 9/11 attacks, I boarded a plane in Memphis with two red, tapestry suitcases, heading for an intrinsically challenging city. It would, at times, be navigational warfare to survive and conquer.  

I was immediately charmed by Charleston. I had a sense of place and longing to be surrounded by this elegant land. The delicately aged antebellum architecture, tranquil breeze off the bay, and familiar conversational rhythms were—and continue to be—a salve to the North’s hurried aggression. Walking the cobblestone streets, laid long before my childhood hometown was built, was an awakening to a newer version of me that realized home—and particularly Charleston—was the most romantic destination all along and perhaps the one I’d been longing for.

There is no formula or blueprint for becoming an art dealer or for the discipline, creativity, and business style that one pursues.  It has been a long and, at times, treacherous journey, but one filled with thrill, adventure, and the unexpected. The art hunt has been has been my obsession, my relentless pursuit.

Passion and courage fuel the creative entrepreneur to move forward, innovate, and take risks that others wouldn’t dare. Passion and courage fuel us to believe in ourselves to do our best as our lives unfold. As Albert Camus wrote, “Life is a sum of all your choices. Large or small, our actions forge our futures, hopefully inspiring others along the way.”

Writers were my ticket out of the South; visual artists, my compass back home.  Raised on the wide open Mississippi Delta, with pages of expansive porches and miles of two-lane highways for meandering thoughts, I believed that words were a vehicle to see the world. As an English major, my Ole Miss education of bourbon-soaked conversations about the romantic lives of Ernest Hemingway’s Havana and Walker Percy’s New York spurred me to seek out a definition of myself that seemed somehow bigger than my current surroundings would allow.