Don Cavin at 81, sketching Killarney in 2015

Buying Fine Art

How do you determine what is fine art when selecting contemporary artists?

Buying Art that you love, is of course the prime motivator for collecting Art. But, great Art is, typically expensive. Accredited famous Art is Fine art. There is however excellent Art that is undiscovered and not expensive. In the world of Fine Art prices are into the thousands to upwards of 100 plus millions. All Artists begin selling their early work at low prices as unknown work.

Value follows success. Value is created by inspiration polished by Endless work. The body of work proves greatness.
Death is the Final Chapter

Generally, A Fine Art painting career has a curve that illuminates the growth and quality of the Artists work. Picasso started painting as a realist painter! Today he is known world wide, for his Cubism and variations there of, along with other media that he chose to work, beyond paint. His career began as unremarkable.

Interested people today, wishing to collect great Art need to work with a good or proven Gallery. Successful Art dealers have a developed instinct to select quality art, which is why they’re successful.

The collector then determines not what is fine art but, what fine art do they like from the professional dealer’s available choices. The collector then has to choose.

The above Picasso painting, probably a study, sold for 10,000,000. at last years fall Heffel auction.

Great artists like Picasso, tend to follow similar patterns of exploration and growth, leading to active spurts that reach creative peaks of that current working style...such as exploring different brush work, media, techniques , or reactivate their colour, as their variations continue to develop.

These expressive peaks by a driven Artist can be short lived or last for years. The Great ones typically move forward to a new inspiration within a current phase or style, or seek an entirely different media / subject as the years of dedicated painting roll on.

The creative mind explores...the practical mind embraces the status quo.

Canada’s famous Group of Seven (1920-1933) and their contemporaries, generally followed the above outline each with their own unique interpretation.

Dedication to artistic expression, is the Art platform that greatness is built upon, as it is in this day, or back to say 1920...100 years ago. A major milestone, the Groups 1st Show of Canada’s most famous collaborative and the unique beginning of Canadian Art.

Don Cavin 1934-2020, dedicated most of his adult life to his wonderfully expressive style of landscape painting. Buckingham Fine Art first presented his work with a fall show in our Uxbridge Gallery in the late fall of 2004.

Dons first one man show that fall, sold out by opening day.
We continued a one man Don Cavin Show each year since, and each year produced the same result.

Don Cavin died February 8th 2020. May 30th Buckingham Gallery announced his passing. We held back the announcement and decided on an Online Show, THE FINAL CHAPTER due to Covid 19 rules.

This first Cavin Collection part one offering, contained 25 small field sketches and 25 Painting’s. These have sold very well. We have come to realize and are now facing the fact that..The 2020 Collection is the Final Chapter.

Wayne Buckingham

This blog combined with its first offering, Cavin Collection 2020 part one and two is combined, with over 100 images of his work from the last 25 years or so. 

Part one has some of his best work still available Part two,now available, as shown in this blog. Both parts one and part two gives you some of his finest work to choose from.

Tips for optimal viewing online:

Tips for optimal viewing of this rare collection, on line...first, visiting the Gallery is available by appointment. Covid Rules, of course.

We advise reviewing the miniatures of both the sketches and paintings included, first. This allows you to see the paintings / sketches as though hanging on a wall at a distance of say 10 or 15 feet. In affect, how you would see if hanging on your wall. The one problem of gauging a work solely from miniatures however, is all of the minis are square format! many of these paintings are rectangular. So your missing part of the sketch or painting. Once you’ve selected a piece, tap the miniature to see the work in full view large format, along with size, price etc.

The advantage of seeing large tracks of a Fine Artist's life’s work; gives you a certain insight to what an artist has accomplished in their life’s work. Be they in their early career efforts, to what their mid career produced, to the results of what his golden maturity period delivered up in what is now the Final Chapter. Don Cavin 1934-2020.

We have determined to present this range of time in Part One and Part Two. The differences of style in his paintings gives insight into his struggle to present a subject in a way that would freshen his efforts in that day...this combines variations in brush work, colour choices, as well as his passion for shape. That is, shapes that define his sense of poetic endearment with in the plane of the painting.

Abstraction was always laying in wait, as he pursued chosen scenes to execute, from his batch of field studies or plein air sketches. These little jewels are the seeds of his paintings. He would select a sketch from his collection. Then decide how to present it as a painting, be it a small work or large canvas. This then becomes ...the excitement of the journey, as the painting then begins to unfold...

Wayne Buckingham