Pop Surrealist portrait by Arabella Proffer

New Painting: Carmel

12×12″ oil on panel. You can adopt her over here.

CarmelbyProffer

This painting I spent a lot of time on for a specific show at Auguste Clown Gallery in Melbourne. I shouldn’t have agreed to do the show, as making this painting took time away from work on my upcoming solo show. A week before I was to send it off to Melbourne, I got an email from Scott Listfield about what had been going on with Auguste Clown. Trust me, it takes a lot for artists to out a gallery — let alone in a bulk email.

I’m so glad I decided to not send it. The fallout was pretty quick you can see here, here, and here.

Auguste Clown still have a painting of mine in their possession — which I notice is no longer available online — and I am hoping they do the right thing and return it to me. It’s amazing they owe artists hundreds of thousands and they were jerking around collectors who bought work.

Whether it is blue chip galleries or Dorito chip galleries, I’m glad this whole thing became very public via social media. A lot of people don’t realize it happens on all levels; it is usually kept quite because the artists don’t want to be perceived as “difficult”, but it does happen and a lot more than you think. For this gallery to get in this deep, then disappear and close once they were called out very publicly, is certainly a more extreme example.

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