Video: Kenny Baldwin at Peter Beckett Gallery 2008

Recollections from my “Accidental” Art Gallery– 2007-2008

 I had no intention of opening an art gallery. It began as a one month solo exhibition. The Leftside Gallery was  well suited to exhibiting large paintings, Unlike stage actors, painters are usually a few steps removed from their audience so I decided to start paying the rent to see what would happen.

Observations: Cultural Anthropology and

Field Notes, Winter 2008

My initial exhibition included paintings and artifacts that related to sailing and wooden boat building –I had been living aboard a wooden ketch on Martha’s Vineyard during the previous winter.   The work in the windows has more to do with free-jazz and the winter landscape but for some reason the art gallery still attracts a disproportionate number of sailboat enthusiasts. Perhaps it’s their spirit of adventure.

I had been doing  free-jazz-painting collaboration in the gallery with Kenny Baldwin and Roger Martindill. I went to art school with Roger.  Kenny played music with Graham Caughtry – who was one of my favorite Canadian abstract painters from the 60s– so we were all familiar with improvisation in both languages. Some of the paintings were continued outside in the woods to include quieter voices. These paintings were the basis of the final exhibition which ran until March 15th 2008.

WinterJazzLandscapes 66 x 80 in.




















"To have a jazz trio rehearsing in the gallery on Friday afternoons

was a pleasure. It reminds me of my artist-in-residence days in Santa Fe– painting with piano and opera soloists rehearsing next door."