Detail of “Mystic Seaport” by Carl Evers - Antiques and the Arts Online

2 - THE GALLERY July 15, 2011 — Antiques and The Arts Weekly
WORCESTER, MASS. — “If you are
fair with a collector and honest, you will
have that collector for life. I have had customers
for 20 to 30 years. I have filled
their houses up with paintings,” said art
dealer Bill Union, owner of Art and
Antique Gallery.
Union offers a “buy-back” guarantee. If a
collector is not happy with an art purchase
for any reason, Union will buy it back for
the same price. If the painting comes back
to him more than a year after he sold it,
Union pays a ten percent increase over the
initial sales price. “That is a ten percent
increase for life, not per year,” he quipped.
Also, a professional dealer is expected to
know what they are looking at when they
are inspecting a painting for purchase, so
the buy-back guarantee does not apply to
dealer purchases.
Art and Antique Gallery also has a 24hour
evaluation period for works of art that
are shipped. This is especially important if a
collector is purchasing a painting based on
an image sent through email or seen on a
website (Art and Antique Gallery is listed
on AskArt.com). Once a painting is
received, if the customer does not like the
work for any reason, they can ship it back.
Although Union declares that he is not in
the “finance business,” he will extend terms
for paying over a three-month time period
in certain cases. “Any longer than that and
you probably should not be buying art, you
BY DENNIS COSTIN
OWNER, ERNDEN FINE ART GALLERY
Ernie Bynum speaks with the voice of a colorist concentrating
not on painting pretty pictures but on
painting images that relate to his past, but in a manner
that creates mystery and intrigue. He applies layer
upon layer of paint, reductive in imagery, yet expansive
and dynamic in its depth of color. A whole dream-like
world resonates with inner life and inner light, drawing
the viewer through the plane into this deep, mysterious
essence.
Over time Bynum’s work has become much less figurative.
A passing suggestion of image becomes an
expression of color and light. His shapes seem to dissolve
into space; and whereas in the past, one could
more clearly see the skiff, cottage and wharf and water
tower, and now the eye catches only a furtive glimpse
of these images, receding in the expanding field of
color. There are no horizon lines in Bynum’s pieces
because he continues to reach for the ultimate in a
painting; creating what could be a landscape, a still life
or images of animals that beckon to the viewer’s imagination.
While Bynum continues to work on less and less figuration
in his work, with some of his newly completed
work he has drawn on imagery he started working on
19 years ago; a cow, a rooster, a horse, flowers, all more
abstract than figurative but which continue to speak to
the diversity of his creative genius.
Bynum states, “Painting is a process that begins with
no preconceived notions of what I will paint. I let my
subconscious take over and begin working on my compositions
as ideas begin to flow. I do not rely on tech-
My Kind Of Art
Art dealer Bill Union of Antique and Art Gallery, Worcester, Mass., next to an oil
painting by Constantine Kluge titled “A Beautiful Day.”
should be buying food,” said Union. “Art is
a luxury. Paintings are not a necessity.”
Necessity or not, Union does think of
paintings as a good investment, with one
important word of advice: “Never buy anything
you don’t like.” For him, that means
paintings from the Nineteenth and early
Twentieth Centuries, which he considers
to be the “sweet spot” of the art market. “If
you’ve noticed, it is getting harder to find.
Demand is up. It’s that wonderful oldfashioned
school of art that I see holding
up over time. My kind of art.”
Union believes strongly in the affinity of
the antiques market and the art market. “I
was the first paintings dealer to set up at
antiques shows. There were guys who sold
antiques with a few pictures mixed in, but
Ernie Bynum: Layers of Mystery
Ernie Bynum, “ID” (BY11211), oil on canvas, 36 by
24 inches.
nique but rather on my ideas and sense of composition.
Using both brush and palette knife, I build up
colors, so that in the process images emerge, unique to
in the early days, I was the only guy at
antiques shows who sold only artwork —
starting with the old New Haven Coliseum
show in the 1970s. At the time, that show
was the oldest antiques show in the country.
Now, more and more paintings dealers
are flocking to antiques shows. Miami
Beach is now 60 percent art dealers. It’s
known for art.”
Union buys and sells paintings every day.
“I have a lot of things happening all the
time,” he said. This constant activity, coupled
with his willingness to let things go at
reasonable prices, means that a good piece
in his hands generally will not last long
before it is sold. He has a full schedule of
antiques shows lined up, including the Baltimore
Antiques Show; Madison Bouckville,
in Bouckville, N.Y.; New Hampshire Week
in Manchester; Birchwood Manor Antiques
Show in Whippany, N.J.; the Farmington
Antiques Show (now at the Harwinton,
Conn. Fairgrounds); The Pier Antiques
Show in New York City; and the Connecticut
Fall Antiques Show in Hartford.
Art shoppers do not have to wait for an
antiques show to meet Union and see the
vast number of paintings he has at a given
time. “People should know that they can
come to me directly,” said Union.
Art and Antique Gallery is at 4 Old English
Road in Worcester, Mass. To reach Bill Union,
call 508-259-4694 or email
wmunion@charter.net.
each painting, imagery that resonates with warmth,
sensitivity, peacefulness and tranquility. For me, my
palette is merely for experimentation. I would never be
able to mix the same color twice. Each new day, I am
challenged to mix new colors.”
These paintings originate at the intersection of psychological
and literal landscapes. Through his unique
vocabulary, Bynum creates work that is a compelling
union of luminous color and profound affect.
He draws inspiration from his experience of nature
and place, from his youth in the pine forests of North
Carolina, his exposure as a teenager to coastal Connecticut
and Cape Cod, his adult years spent in New
Mexico, the Caribbean and West Africa, and now in
Provincetown, New York City and Connecticut. The
separation of nature and spirit is not a reality for
Bynum. For Bynum, it cannot be discussed; it must be
painted.
Bynum received his BS degree from Fordham University
in New York City. He concluded his graduate
studies at the University of Chicago, graduating Cum
Laude with an MA. Prior to painting full time, Bynum
was a psychotherapist.
Bynum’s work has been exhibited in both solo and
group exhibitions in Provincetown; New York City;
Arroyo Seco, New Mexico; San Juan, Puerto Rico; and
Saba, Netherlands Antilles. His paintings are in private
and corporate collections throughout the United States,
in the Caribbean, Europe and Australia.
Ernden Fine Art Gallery is at 397 Commercial Street in
Provincetown, Mass. For information on Ernie Bynum’s
work, call 508-487-6700 or email erndengallery@att.net.
The gallery’s website is www.erndengallery.com.