How I Became an Art Dealer as Well as a Collector

I’ve been involved with art since childhood when I began to ‘Draw the Pirate’ in the Grit Newspaper. My appreciation for form and beauty and the rendering of ideas and visions into media have always been active to some degree.

Forays into art sales in my twenties initially were based on profit motive. These ventures into selling works on paper ultimately were unsuccessful, but not spectacularly so … luckily. I broke even.

The pieces which I collected that had personal significance I would never sell, or so I told myself.

Then I began collecting Sacred Art, primarily bronzes from India and Tibet. Spending time with these pieces with hundreds of years of age to them altered my perception of my role over time. I began to see that these pieces had been here long before me and would be here long after me. Instead of Ownership, I began to recognize Steward as my role.

My pride in ownership reduced to responsibility for preservation.

There also took place a recognition of why I purchased some pieces and not others even though I may have liked them equally well. What I saw was that the resonance with the pieces I obtained was based in what I was processing during my life at the time.

In other words, I bought what I needed to grow- whether this was apparent to me at the time or not. There is a reciprocal feeding process which occurs between the art and the viewer. This is especially true in Objective Art. (Other blog posts will be going into more detail on this little recognized category of art.)

This growth process is a mutual enhancement of two living entities- the perceptual capacity of the viewer and the rendering capacity of the artist to communicate their perception of that which is rendered. Apply the law of quantum entanglement here and this will make more sense as time and space are relegated to be subservient to the force of attention.

That may take a little digestion, or not.

The artist has connected their work with a well. That well can be drawn upon for as long as that stream continues to flow. Many individuals may come to and be nourished by it. And when one’s thirst is quenched, one passes the cup to the next in line.

With this awareness, I moved into the role of Art Dealer. I did not depart the realm of Collector, or Artist. The movement was organic, whole, from my Being. The profit motive was no longer the driver behind sales. Did I lose a sense of value? Not at all. It’s just that seeing my place in a larger scheme of things offered me choices that before weren’t visible

- Eric Brummel, March 22, 2023