I spent six years in the mainstream art world. It started with a real estate purchase in an artist’s colony in Sarasota and ended with a giant pot of money in an open hole on Clinton Street in New York City's Lower East Side. The whole time in between was an aesthetically pleasing, wildly interesting ride through a creative mindspace I hadn't been that interested in before I embarked on the voyage.
One of my favorite things about art is creating my own story around what it is or why the artist made it. I never had the urge to find out the real answer because I don’t think it’s my business. My viewing of the art is my decision about what I see. It can’t be right or wrong; it just is.
Art is lonely without people looking at it. You can stand next to your best friend, whom you’ve known since you were two, and see two completely different things. You can hate something and realize you love it without moving. You can connect to something that you don’t understand.
Being a gallerist is sitting alone in abject silence most days. Openings are busy, weekdays are air, weekends are a trickle. Some months, a single sale is a success. Other months, you sell out at the opening. It doesn’t always make sense. Placing red dots at an opening was like a kind of euphoria for me.
Sometimes looking at art is looking back at yourself. It’s asking yourself if you can open yourself up to thinking. It’s a small request to use your eyes and keep looking at art until something new appears. Watching people breeze past paintings is like an impish six-year-old constantly stepping on the toes of your new white sneakers.
My job as a gallery owner was often its own form of performance art. How long can I keep this thing afloat before it eventually sinks to the bottom of the ocean with all the art in tow? Some days, I wished it would. Some days, I was so full of myself that my small office was closing in on my swelling head.
If it was all a simulation, I was the art. I failed almost every month. I loved almost every second.
© Jonathan Greene, November 13, 2026
