Art Collecting doesn't have to be scary or expensive

`Alternate title: Photographing paintings is a fool's errand

For Mother’s Day this year, my family gifted me a painting from one of my favorite local artists, Jeff Pugh.

I’m not kidding, this was the best of MANY attempts at taking a good photo.

This photo isn’t any better but maybe gives you an idea of scale?

Well, I should say my husband Stephen got me this painting. My kids had nothing to do with it. One of them gave me a picture they drew five minutes earlier and another just forgot about Mothers Day entirely. But Stephen really knocked it out of the park.

But Meg, you might be saying, that’s an awfully big painting for him to choose and just assume you’ll like. To which I say, he knew I would love it because we’ve been at this game for a decade.

Stephen and I never set out to become the type of people who “own art.” It just kind of happened when we went to support our friend Paige Anderson at a local art market and stumbled into pieces that we liked and, surprisingly, could afford.

I think the first pieces we ever purchased were two from Annie Blake at the Springville Art Museum 100 Dollar Show, where every year, around Christmas time, artists sell small works for $100 each.

As soon as we hung the two pieces on our wall in our first tiny Salt Lake City house, we were intoxicated by the thrill of having art! From an actual artist! On our wall!

Giving each other art for birthdays and holidays became a regular thing for us. One year for Stephen’s birthday I commissioned Paige to create a custom piece for him.

These photos are so bad that I’m wondering if I should have pulled out my DSLR like an old school 2012 mommy blogger

If our house ever catches fire, I will first make sure my family and dog are safe, then I will run back into flames to grab this painting:

I’ll also probably grab the Justin Wheatley piece I bought at the Utah Art Market 1.3.5 show a few years later. I had followed Wheatley on social media and admired his work for years, so when I got to see his work in person, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to own one of his originals. It was definitely a financial stretch at the time, but I have never for one second regretted it.

After buying the piece, he asked if he could fix a small section of the painting and deliver it to our home. I enthusiastically agreed, and when he arrived with the painting, I made him pose with it in our living room of our second, slightly-bigger-but-not-by-much SLC home. I’m honestly surprised he didn’t call the police.

At that same show, Annie Blake was selling more of her small paintings. Our daughter immediately took to one of her works, and Annie patiently asked why she liked it and what the painting meant to her. We left with the painting and hung it next to the other two of hers.

Annie tragically passed in 2020, and though I never interacted with her beyond those couple of conversations at art shows, I am deeply grateful and honored to have the art of someone so clearly loving and good in my home. I never expected art to have that kind of emotional significance.

There’s another piece in our collection that carries quite a bit of emotion. Late last year, some friends showed up at my house with an art surprise —a portrait of my late dad and me dancing at my wedding, painted by Lorna Anderson.

I look at that painting and I feel loved and seen. And, obviously, sad, but in a way that makes my grief feel collective. A reminder that there are friends who are willing to sit with me in my sadness.

I hung that portrait over the weekend as part of the gallery wall that my friend Ashton helped me hang. Ashton has an innate and impeccable sense of design. When we built our house, I brought Ashton, not Stephen, to the design center to help me make all the aesthetic decisions. There’s no one I trust more to create beauty. So when I say she helped me put together a gallery wall, what I mean is she did it and I just hammered nails where she told me to. And that was the absolute right decision.

Over the years since those first two tiny paintings in our first home, our art collection has grown to a pretty sizeable number. Somewhere along the way, we got many of the paintings framed, and nearly had to take out a second mortgage to do so. But I’m glad we did because hot damn! Framed art looks so sophisticated!

And it’s so much easier to move around than paint or wallpaper. The walls in our now third house are all white because we’ve lived here for four years and I still haven’t been able to commit to a sing paint color or wallpaper because what if I hate my choice a week later? Art, though, I know I’ll never hate. So I’ve just covered the walls with paintings.

This beaut is from Jenna Marie Ward

The Pugh piece is definitely our biggest art purchase so far. The second-biggest was the Frame TV, which isn’t technically art, but does make me feel better about having a giant TV in my living room. Television is pretty foundational to who I am, so I’m not going to not watch TV in my living room. The Frame at least makes it look okay when it’s off.

That’s all beside the point. The point is, we were ready to make a bigger, non-TV art purchase after years of collecting and finding artists on the rise while cultivating a sensibility and knowing exactly what we like. I need to get it framed, but first, I need to win the lottery to pay for it.

There’s only one piece in our home that can top it, and it was significantly less expensive. We have a huge space above our stairs, and for years we’ve had a painting there that we never really loved. So we headed to Blick for some acrylics and brushes and together my two daughters created a new masterpiece based on my color preferences.

I think they nailed it.

Now, fifteen years into marriage and almost as many years into being serious about owning art, I look around and feel pleased with what we’ve gathered slowly over time as our budget has afforded. We’ve learned a lot, and perhaps the most valuable nugget of wisdom we’ve gained is that art ownership isn’t just for the elites. Everyone deserves pieces that speak to them, and there are plenty of ways to find those pieces.

I have a few tips:

• Start small, both in the size of art acquired and money spent.

• Follow artists you like on social media. Follow the artists they interact with. Get borderline stalkerish about it. This is the best way to catch new work and discounts on work previously too expensive.

• Look for work you like from artists early in their career when their pieces are affordable. I laugh when I think about how much I paid Paige to make that custom painting a decade ago.

• Find and visit art shows. I swear there’s one every weekend, at least here in Utah. Go not just with the intention to buy art, but also to familiarize yourself with various artists’ work and price points to plan for future purchases. Galleries and framing shops are great to visit for this same reason.

• If you don’t like leaving your house, get familiar with Saatchi and Etsy.

• Check thrift stores and estate sales for frames or even original art.

• Go slow. And don’t buy art just to buy art. Buy what you really, truly love, when you see it and when you can.

And finally, the last tip is that you can put anything you want on your walls. I love the work we splurged on, and I also love the dragon my kid painted in first grade.

Truly, someone take my phone away from me. I cannot be trusted to photograph with it.

Both speak to me and evoke feelings of warmth and joy. And both feel true to who we are. And isn’t that the point?`

Other recent purchases

• A panic Zara order because it’s May and none of my kids have shorts that fit.

• An Echo Pop so my youngest can listen to audiobooks in his room. This has turned out to be a mixed bag — he likes to call us on the upstairs Alexa after he’s “gone to bed” and ask things like, “how do straws work,” or “tell me how you’re feeling right now.” Also, last night, Stephen found him listening to a not-at-all age-appropriate Cardi B. song, so I need to figure out those parental controls.

• Jo Malone English Pear & Freesia cologne. I am obsessed with myself when I’m wearing this scent. It’s warm but fresh, long-lasting, and one spray goes a long way.

• Ingredients to make the recipes in The Wishbone Kitchen Cookbook. So far, I’ve made the roast chicken, the tomato pasta, the short ribs, and the Greek chicken salad, and they’ve all been absolute bangers. It’s probably the best cookbook I’ve ever owned.

Til next week!

xo,

Meg