A former Santa Monica gallery owner with more than 100 art shows around the world, including Los Angeles, New York, and Toyko, Christina de Musee has amassed a great wealth of knowledge about how to make and sell art.
Now she’s in a perfect position to help other artists who are struggling to get gallery shows.
“I’ve been supporting myself with my art since I was 15 years old,” de Musee says from her spacious Palm Desert home.
It’s not promoted on her website, but they find her: foreign artists trying to break into the American market, established artists whose art has become dated or those who are finding it difficult to earn exhibits.
VIDEO: Christina de Musee talks about her background and describes one of her paintings, Ravenous Appetite.
Recently, an artist from Rome was at her home for a week. They updated her color palette, photographed and framed her work, created an electronic portfolio, improved her website and then she flew home.
De Musee derives a lot of satisfaction in knowing her life’s experience will help pay off for others. A vivacious redhead who looks like Susan Sarandon, de Musee learned early on, and from the best, namely artist Carl Schneider.
“I heard he was in town, but knew he could be difficult,” recalls de Musee, around age 15, and still living at home with her musician father and entrepreneurial mother. “So I went to his studio and asked if I could be his assistant.”
During the first two days with Schneider, de Musee cleaned up his studio, and organized his materials. By the third day, he finally handed her a piece of chalk. “This was my chance to show him what I could do,” de Musee says. “But after I was done drawing him, he took one look at it, and ripped it to pieces!”
A painting in the works at Christina de Musee's home in Palm Desert.
That went on day after day, until de Musee’s drawings became better, and she was able to keep them. She followed him to junk yards, searching for raw materials for his sculptures. “He didn’t say much, but I learned from his actions,” she recalls.
De Musee always carried a sketch pad and chalk with her wherever she went. One day, Schneider took her to a jazz club. “He had a drink and I had a Shirley Temple,” de Musee says. “Then he tells me to go ask the band if I could draw them!”
The band members laughed, loved and kept her drawings. That’s when de Musee realized that art was a great calling card. “As an artist, you can cross cultures, races, social stratas, anything. People are accepting of artists and their work,” she says.
Shortly after that experience, Schneider left a note for her on his studio door: “Christina, you have talent. Carl.”
(From left) Curator/director Maris Kazaks, artist Christina de Musee, and Rebecca Fine Art Gallery owner Rebecca Pikus.
She never heard from him again, yet that experience led to another with an art consultant. He told her straight about her art materials. “He wanted $200 for his advice, but I told him it was my rent money,” de Musee recalls. “Then he asked me if I was worth it.”
“What he told me, gallery owners wouldn’t. They would just say ‘no’ and send you packing,” she adds.
One of his best nuggets of advice was to improve her art materials, including paints, canvas and framing. To this day, de Musee would rather not eat than use cheap materials, she says. All of her artwork is made from museum quality materials with a Certificate of Authenticity.
Currently, de Musee has a seven-week show at the Rebecca Fine Art Gallery in Cathedral City. Center stage is “Neon Fantasy,” which depicts the back of a woman’s torso, wearing see-through red panties. “This was life on the Las Vegas Strip with neon signs and people walking by,” she says.
“Forgot My Keys,” a tryptich by Christina de Musee.
Two others in the show target the desert art scene in real time. “Infusion of Pleasure” tryptich is depicted in greens that resemble dim lighting. A woman in a short dress appears to be floating across the canvas. In the bottom corner, a man is smoking something from a bowl.
Gallery owner Rebecca Pikus loves de Musee’s strong women figures and bright colors, but believes it’s the story that draws people in. “I Forgot My Keys” is a social commentary on the media, glamour, fashion and sexuality of the desert art scene,” says de Musee.
“It depicts a crowd of people from many different angles in bright colors. In the center, there’s a model with dreamy eyes, while an angry-looking man in the corner is spitting out stingrays.”
“Odyssey” shows at the Rebecca Fine Art Gallery until March 26, with a closing night reception in which several of the artists will be in attendance,” says Maris Kazaks, curator.
Rebecca Fine Art Gallery, 68895 Perez Road, #7, Cathedral City, 760-534-5888; www.fineartvortex.com
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