About

I have vivid memories of walking into my future employer’s house at age 15.

She’d been a painter and art educator who’d retired years earlier. Her late husband had been a Chief Engineer in the Merchant Marine. The story went that the appearance of shipping containers filled with treasures from across the globe would signal the end of his frequent months-long absences.

There were thirty rooms in their 1880s house (mansion) and they were packed! Glass and porcelain from Europe and Asia. Enormous wooden sculptures from Africa. Textiles from India and the Pacific Islands. There was a Steinway piano in the music room… piano aside who else has a music room!?

I’m still convinced that no other kid from southeastern Massachusetts had ever laid eyes on anything like this… I was lucky enough to work with her in that house four days per week for the next three years.

By the time I started selling art and antiques in the early 2000s I’d already begun a career as a graphic designer. I’d graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design (1993) where they taught the value and importance of concept, form, color and texture AND how very often the tiniest deviations from the expected results in a VERY different emotional response among viewers.

At some point in my journey as a dealer I realized that the objects I personally found most attractive or even fascinating had two things in common:

1. Most belonged to the category of “less-conventional”.
2. Things frequently ticked the same evaluative criteria boxes I’d learned about in school.

Like a Venn diagram, the two don’t always overlap but I can’t describe the net effect as anything other than “magical” when they do.

Of greatest value is understanding that the effect of magic – whether it’s presence is made manifest by character of a single brush stroke by a brush with uneven, stray bristles or an accidental yet perfectly placed gash – is something that everyone feels even if they don’t completely comprehend the how or why.

I’m both thankful and honored by the trust, generosity and encouragement I’ve received from so many collectors, scholars, dealers and experts over the years. I’m also proud of what Blue Farm is today – sometimes great, sometimes weird, hopefully interesting but all originating from the magical overlap.