Written at the Beginning of Art Collection – by Sarea Wang
These days Seattle is getting to its best season in the year. The sunshine just beautifully blessed everyone in this city. I just started my art business a couple weeks ago. Before studying art, I studied Economics, English Literature, Art History, and Business. But I felt I didn’t have too much talent in Business. In 2020, due to abrupt mental disorders, which my parents don’t want me to mention on my website, I decided to drop everything I had done by then and started pursuing art, which was my dream in my childhood. Due to God’s blessing, I moved to Seattle in 2021 and started art learning and collecting.
After getting baptized in 2022, I tried to keep my journal to record my thoughts regarding my special mental experience when I battled paranoia and depression and how Christianity and Art saved me. Since I started art collecting, I have been thinking about writing a journal for every piece in my collection. The Bowl in Motion and The Young Lady in Hat are the first two pieces that I collected. It was on a special sale for fundraising to commemorate the artist’s son. Then I collected some other pieces from Instagram, galleries, and direct purchases from artists. It is like a keep-growing hobby for me to collect artworks that I feel touched. As a small art collector, I feel my collection is one way to let people know about me and my life. It is like an album collecting some precious life moments that can be expressed through artwork. I know art collecting costs a lot, but when you look at an artwork, you might feel the connection between it and your life. Perhaps the main color of that painting is your favorite color. Many of my collections are in blue because blue is my favorite color. I know it sounds like a pretty simple reason for artwork choosing, but when you are attracted to an artwork there must be some unconscious connection between you two.
Art collecting is more than just shopping, sometimes, it is about relating yourself to art creation and expression. You can find resonance between the artwork and yourself. Georgia O’Keeffe said “I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn’t say any other way—things I had no words for. ” It is true that sometimes you can find the feeling expressed through artworks and you can’t describe it in words. You find the mysterious bond between yourself and certain artwork, so you decide to take it home or add it to your collection. Artworks can be financial assets and it can also be your emotional assets. As a small art collector, I deeply understand the spiritual journey that collectors experience from being attracted to certain artworks to finally receiving them on their hands. It is both a financial investment and a spiritual investment. Artworks that were created with stories of artists became a new vehicle to embody your own emotions, feelings, and life experiences.
Being new to the gallery industry, I hope to treat every special piece of arts and crafts as artwork. I will be glad to get to know new artists and art collectors, build friendships, and share our stories in this lifetime art journey.