Art Is Where You Find It

Though there isn’t much to do in the way of food or culture in Spring Hill (at least in my few hours there I found nothing) I was surprised to find Eddie the art collector. Eddie’s brand new, ecru-painted home was full of lively color in the abundance of art he had hanging and resting.

The main pieces of his collection held dear to his heart as works done by his Aunt Ann. Ann Callan was an incredible artist and local figure from Vero Beach. She painted all of her life and this is showcased in the changes from year to year as her pieces matured.

Eddie said that she painted thousands of pieces and I think he has most of the collection. Ronn has purchased a few pieces and several are in galleries around the world. The general price is pretty high for these works, as it should be, and it was a treat to be able to analyze them from the comfort of a recliner.

I don’t know much about her, there isn’t anything on the Web that I could glean, but Eddie let me in on some family gossip. She drank sometimes, but wasn’t a Dorothy Parker lush or anything. Her works reflect things as simple as colorful flowers to dark imagery of souls wondering in space. Two pictures of women really amazed me, especially since Eddie had them on either side of his TV making them easy to compare and contrast. One is a colorful woman with a veil on giving me the impression of Catholic or maybe Latin heritage. Her eyes grab you with roughly wrangled lines almost scratched into the corneas. The other woman is inspired, I would suppose, by cubists like Picasso. The colors are muted and have a rich 1970s feel with olives and oranges. I don’t know what she was thinking and from what I understood she didn’t share her meanings too easily so we will all just have to assume. Maybe one day I will have a collection like this, as for now I have a few originals and several unframed prints – I need to get with my neighbor on that