Invitation for comments…This first blog is about my collection and the process of collecting over the years. I have fought against labels;, especially attaching labels to works sold black artists. I have collected pieces that moved me in my own identity (African American, Jamaican, “world intuitive”), and I have learned art. I like the idea of Living @Home with ‘Art for Art’s Sake’ and its social and political implications (I don’t display the artist’s tags didactic label for the Doctor Cora Marshall’s “Going, Going, Gone” art works as intended, I guess I am censoring to not potentially offend viewers).
Dwight Baird calls La Mujer con Zapatos Rojos his Mona Lisa. La Mujer, the “appellation”, in the door greats my family, friends and guests faithfully as they return home. It has found a permanent, good home. Good in the sense of treasured, loved, protected, but more so the affirmation of the artist’s gifts, dialogue (hidden motifs discovered years after, artist as “usurper”, etc.) after the “adoption”. It typifies my acquisition journey, accidental finds of Artist and Art at a street fair in Norwalk, CT. The skillful artist, a sensitive (white) Canadian painting the Cuban scene with sensibility, honesty, and the pursuit of perfection. Our occasional dinner conversations over the years, like the majority of my artist encounters globally, enriched me. The collection is simply, unique and eclectic. Also, enigmatic, art for its own sake, art as politics, as with Dwight’s dilemma, who has a right to telling stories? Art as Live.