How Do You Start Your Own Art Collection?

Professional Fine Artist, Curator. Writer & Contributing Editor on Art, Culture, Tantric Buddhism. Former Arts Ambassador, US State Dept.

Jul 14, 2018

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Articles › Art

Imagine you have just died. You were really really old. In fact, you have out lived your family and your friends.

A stranger comes into your home to catalogue your possessions.They are an estate manager and they must clear your household to honor your will or to pay off any bills you may have left. They come inside your home or apartment and there is one painting, a chair, and a bed. The painting is in a place of honor, well lit. They stop and stare at the painting. It is your legacy.

That painting should tell the person as much about you as the music you have on a shelf or the books that you own. A painting should reveal to people if you were funny, romantic, spiritual, mystical, patriotic, sensuous, and even what colors you liked.

Choose a painting, drawing or a sculpture like it is the only thing you will look at every day for the rest of your life.

Fall “in love” with it. When you are in love you cherish what you love, enjoy the time you spend together, are proud to be seen with your love. If you buy for love, not investment, you will never regret it.

Later you may find it was just puppy love and fall for a more mature lover; that will be the second piece in your collection.

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Uriél Danā at the Getty Museum — At the Getty Museum

Uriél Danā has been honored for her work as a fine artist, writer, and lecturer for more than four decades. Her oils, gouache, and lost wax bronze work have been shown in 12 countries on 4 continents. She is a former U.S. State Department Ambassador to the Arts under the Arts America Program.

Her oil paintings and drawings are included in dozens of private, corporate, and celebrity art collections. In October 2015 two of her paintings were selected for the Carousel de Louvre exhibition in Paris, and she was included in the catalogue Modern Art Masters in Complex Musée du Louvre. Her work was included in the landmark exhibit “The Otherworld” (link) featuring the history of Visionary Art. The exhibit spanned 2021-2022 at the Roland Gallery in Los Angeles’ California Lutheran College. From 2022 to 2023 one of her drawings was featured in the Small Works exhibit at the MEAM (European Museum of Modern Art) in Barcelona, Spain.

After serving in the United States Air Force, Uriél attended Rudolph Schaeffer School of Design in San Francisco, studied Sculpture, Museum Management, & Art History at College of Marin, Kentfield, and apprenticed 4 yrs with California Surrealist Master Painter, Gage Taylor in Marin. In addition to her own art career, she was known for her painting collaborations with the late Gage Taylor under the name Taylor-Dana.

Uriél curates two fine art streams on BlueSky: of Contemporary Figurative Artists and Japanese Woodblock Prints.