One thing I love about art is the lack of rules. Artistic expression is possibly the last truly free place we all can visit. It's a place where buildings can be any shape, dogs can have two heads, chairs can stand perfectly on three legs and all of it is just fine with me.

As you may imagine, I have been asked by developing artists to critique their work on many occasions and my general approach is to say no thank you and then to offer that if they have a specific problem, I'd be happy to help. To critique an artist's artwork is to force an opinion that may interrupt their journey and passion. If someone wants to paint things out of scale or an unrealistic color, who am I to say they shouldn't or that they did a poor job of doing it? For all I know, there is a huge demand for their vision and if hundreds of people enjoy that vision, would they be wrong? In short - NO.

This by the way, doesn't mean I don't have an opinion about the art I see, I've just learned in the grand scheme of things, it means very little.

I remember over twenty years ago when my wife Linda and I were directors of a very large gallery in Southport Connecticut owned by the fine art publisher, Greenwich Workshop. The paintings we sold ranged in price from $1,000. to $100,000. New work had come in by an artist and I was looking it over. I recall noting that I wasn't in love with one of the three new paintings. It was a small piece priced at $2,500. and the next day one of our better clients pulled up in his classic Bentley to come see these paintings. He came in, saw the three paintings and purchased the one I wasn't fond of on the spot. It was obvious it made his day and delivered a good lesson to me in the process. Beauty really is in the eye of the beholder. We all like different things and isn't life grand because of it?

During our time there, we also designed the framing, set pricing, arranged the first show and sold the first "Dinotopia" paintings by artist and author, James Gurney. The story Dinotopia became a successful series of books and even had a short television run on ABC.

Now while Jim was then and is still very much today, one very talented painter, Greenwich's gallery represented some amazing, mostly realist painters. So who knew how colorful paintings and illustrations of dinosaurs cohabiting with people would be accepted? I can share our approach had very little to do with the subject matter, but rather on Gurney's ability to make his subject matter believable through solid technique. This by the way is what also made his book an amazing success.

It was a wonderful story, but the art and magical creativity Gurney displayed, made the story shine. I'm sure if we got wrapped up in who would spend thousands of dollars on dinosaur paintings, the opportunity for this art to make it into the hands of collectors would have been lost. We instead presented the art only as that which was already in demand, whimsical and fun. Not as something which broke some set of rules.

Andy Warhol's paintings are yet another incredible example of art easy to have been critiqued. Yet Warhol couldn't have cared less and neither could his collectors. Warhol's fascination with Marilyn Monroe alone is still interesting to me. Since he was the first to artistically popularize the star after her death in 1962, I think of all the other artists that still create Marilyn images today. A gallery walk down Worth Ave. in Palm Beach will net you more interpretations of her face then you may care to see and to some degree I'm always left wondering if this is about her or about him.

Certainly there are those who would not have considered Warhol's representation of the film icon to be great art, but I wonder just the opposite. Did Warhol actually make Marilyn much more of an icon today then she would have ever been? He made this sort of artist expression okay and others followed. Is it good art? Not for me to decide, it's just a good thing Andy didn't care about art rules either.

Finally, I also have to mention the massive grazing horse head sculpture by Nic Fiddian-Green at the National Sporting Library & Museum. GO SEE IT! Scale is an exciting thing to tamper with and I feel this piece of art is a balance of narrative genius and a three dimensional mind game. It is one of the best vertical creations I've ever seen. Viewed as a profile, broad visionaries will see an entire horse, not just the head. From the front you can only want to pet it and from the rear, a view you couldn't normally see, it still looks like something alive, but not a horse. I understand some have seen a whale. I see something peaceful and a free thinking artist at work.

Again, if rules had of dictated scale beyond life size as off limits, we'd all feel the loss.

Live An Artful Life, Tom