{"id":347608,"date":"2025-12-15T22:15:12","date_gmt":"2025-12-15T22:15:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/347608\/"},"modified":"2025-12-15T22:15:12","modified_gmt":"2025-12-15T22:15:12","slug":"advisor-daniel-malarkey-on-finding-art-you-want-to-wake-up-to","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/347608\/","title":{"rendered":"Advisor Daniel Malarkey on Finding Art You Want to Wake Up To"},"content":{"rendered":"

The first painting that stunned Daniel Malarkey made his stomach lurch. In 2006, he saw Edvard Munch<\/a>\u2019s Love and Pain<\/a> (1894) at the Metropolitan Museum of Art<\/a> and felt \u201cbutterflies jumping around\u201d in his body. The reaction was so physical it initially confused him. \u201cThat was perhaps the first time when I saw an artwork where I couldn\u2019t really understand what it could do to my body,\u201d he told me. Music can elicit this reaction easily, he said; with visual art, it is far harder to come by. He\u2019s made a career of chasing that feeling ever since. <\/p>\n

On a recent Zoom call from his London home, Malarkey swings his laptop around to show the results of this chase: an Anna Calleja<\/a> painting of postcards clipped to a string, a small painting by Patrizio di Massimo<\/a>, an \u201980s Luis Caballero<\/a> painting, a Paul P.<\/a> work, a painting by Chicago Imagist <\/a>Tom Schneider<\/a>, a tiny Sophie Barber<\/a> work on paper, and a Carroll Dunham<\/a> tucked onto a wall are among the highlights. \u201cThey create some sort of story for your home,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

A man about town in the London art world, Malarkey approaches collecting like storytelling, a habit that traces back to his training in theater at Cours Florent and film at La Sorbonne Nouvelle Paris III. That background still guides him, whether he\u2019s curating a gallery show at the likes of Alison Jacques<\/a>, working with clients, or buying art for himself. He\u2019s interested in the transition from viewing art to falling in love with it, and then deciding to live with a piece. For him, it\u2019s not just what one chooses to buy, but how, where, and with what context it is given. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt affects every day,\u201d Malarkey explained. \u201cHow does [art] change your daily enjoyment? There\u2019s something about looking at pieces where you know the story of the artwork, the artist, you understand why you love that piece, and you see connections between pieces in the collection.\u201d<\/p>\n

When buying art, it\u2019s advisable to think less about what\u2019s fashionable and more about what you want to wake up to, he says. \u201cI often tell people the pieces that will become the most valuable are the ones you\u2019d never want to sell,\u201d he said. Part of that relationship is learning how to look. \u201cSometimes people think, \u2018Oh, you should just like an artwork because I\u2019ve shown it to you,\u2019\u201d he said. \u201cNo, you need to understand the language of the artist\u2026Then you can start thinking about which work would be right for you.\u201d<\/p>\n

Once a work that fits this criteria is found, themes and experiences can then guide the next steps. In a client\u2019s living room, for instance, a painting by the late American painter <\/a>Juanita McNeely<\/a> depicts a nude self-portrait of the artist. \u201cIt makes me think of the word \u2018resilience,\u2019\u201d Malarkey said, noting McNeely\u2019s decades of health struggles and overlooked status in art institutions. Beneath the painting sits a Jean-Marie Appriou<\/a> table sculpture of Ophelia<\/a> drifting into water. The dialogue between the two is what inspires Malarkey. \u201cTo have that in the same room with [McNeely\u2019s] self-portrait, where she spent her life between life and death, that\u2019s super interesting,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

In another home, he placed English artist Derek Jarman<\/a>\u2019s only 1991 white landscape painting near British painter Maggi Hambling<\/a>\u2019s portrait of Oscar Wilde<\/a> dying in Paris. These are two entirely different artists, but together they form a tender, if unexpected, story. Malarkey explained that Jarman, in his dying wish to the director of London\u2019s National Portrait Gallery<\/a>, demanded a sculpture of Wilde in London. The artist the museum selected, coincidentally, turned out to be Hambling.<\/p>\n

Conversations between artists and artworks across generations can also yield rewarding insights. One client now lives with two paintings by the British artist Celia Paul<\/a> hung beside a work by the late Welsh painter Gwen John<\/a>. Paul published a book, Letters to Gwen John, where she wrote to the long-deceased artist, despite never meeting. In this domestic pairing, those imagined exchanges feel literal. \u201cIt gives [the owner] so much joy seeing those together,\u201d Malarkey said.<\/p>\n

Artworks, for Malarkey, can interact with a room historically and emotionally, but it all comes down to trusting that gut instinct and finding the works you want to live with. It\u2019s important not to rush that process. \u201cIt\u2019s really lovely with art\u2014what makes it something you can do your whole life as a collector\u2014is when you wait 10 years to get that piece you\u2019ve always wanted,\u201d he said. \u201cThere\u2019s nothing like hanging that piece.\u201d <\/p>\n

The arrival is slow, but the impact is immediate. One small shift in the room can give the sense that something new has entered your daily life. It\u2019s in finding those connections that Malarkey is still back in front of that Munch painting\u2014waiting for the jump in his stomach that tells him he\u2019s found something special.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The first painting that stunned Daniel Malarkey made his stomach lurch. In 2006, he saw Edvard Munch\u2019s Love…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":347609,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[76,354,355,49,48,14272,356,75,26589],"class_list":{"0":"post-347608","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-artsanddesign","11":"tag-ca","12":"tag-canada","13":"tag-collector-profiles","14":"tag-design","15":"tag-entertainment","16":"tag-maxwell-rabb"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347608","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=347608"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347608\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/347609"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=347608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=347608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=347608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}