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Article: Roll Call V: Ten Voices on How a Collection Begins

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Roll Call V: Ten Voices on How a Collection Begins

Last updated: October 5, 2026

In short: A collection begins with one painting, chosen because you love it and looked at it long enough to know why. Ten voices agree on the order. Advisers at UBS say to learn one artist's best work well, and a collector-adviser asks for the long view; a High Point designer says to buy what you truly love; and a poet, a philosopher and a Nobel novelist explain why a first piece becomes the start of a memory. Begin with one, and let the rest follow.

Why does a collection begin with a single painting?

Because nobody buys a collection. A person buys a painting, and a collection forms around it. The Roman poet Horace gave the odds of that first step in a line of his Epistles: "Dimidium facti qui coepit habet." In my translation, he who has begun has half the deed done.

Lao Tzu said the same thing about distance. In James Legge's translation of the Tao Te Ching, "the journey of a thousand li commenced with a single (step)." The step in this case happens to be hung on a wall.

The designers and advisers who spend their working lives around collectors describe the same beginning, which is why this Roll Call asks them in turn.

What do advisers tell a first-time collector to do?

Read one artist closely. In Art Basel's feature on how UBS advisers would start a contemporary collection, published 5 October 2026, Matthew Newton, Head of UBS Art Advisory in the Americas, puts the whole method in a clause: "do your homework on one of the most interesting artists and one of their best works." The instruction is not to survey the market. It is to know one painter well.

Carola Wiese, an art advisory specialist at UBS in Zurich, adds a line in the same feature: "You're not just doing the same things as most other collectors."

What do designers say a first purchase should be?

The thing you love. Mary Caroline Dansky of Dixon Smith Interiors, reporting from High Point Market for inRegister in June 2026, tells people to "invest in things you truly love: art, rugs, antiques and one-of-a-kind pieces."

Michael Diaz-Griffith, Executive Director and CEO of the Design Leadership Network, told Business of Home that a broad shift toward "authenticity and the analogue" is under way, including "collected objects" and "interiors that feel personal rather than optimized." A first painting bought for love is exactly that: personal, and not optimized.

What does a collection become over time?

A record of the person who made it. Varun Kaji, an art adviser and collector, told Whitewall in December 2025: "I operate with a long view, thinking about how each work will resonate within a larger narrative." One painting is the first sentence of a narrative.

Walter Benjamin, unpacking his own library in 1931, understood that the narrative is made of memory more than money: "Every passion borders on the chaotic, but the collector's passion borders on the chaos of memories."

Orhan Pamuk, who built a real museum around the objects in his novel The Museum of Innocence, wrote in his museum manifesto that "real museums are places where Time is transformed into Space." A wall of paintings acquired over years does the same, in a smaller room.

And Robert Frost, whose "The Road Not Taken" gave my Astral Thicket series its beginning: "Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— / I took the one less traveled by, / And that has made all the difference." A first painting is often exactly that fork.

How do you begin with one painter?

Choose the painter, then choose the painting. If you want to start with a painter you can reach directly, this studio sells original work straight to collectors: ready-to-ship paintings, each with several videos of the finished surface sent before it leaves Nashville, and commissions made for one specific wall, in which I paint two options at once so you choose between two finished directions. Paintings travel rolled to a framer near you, who stretches them, and they arrive ready to hang.

A collection is easier to start than it sounds. One painting is enough to begin, and the homework is the part you will enjoy.

→ Browse the current work: Paintings available now · Start from a conversation: Commissions · For designers and art consultants: Trade Program · Meet the painter: About Angela

Frequently asked questions

How do you start an art collection?

Start with one painting you love and learn about the artist who made it. UBS Art Advisory's Matthew Newton advises doing your homework on one of the most interesting artists and one of their best works, rather than trying to survey the whole market.

Is one painting enough to call it a collection?

It is enough to begin one. A collection forms as a person returns to the same kind of looking, and the first painting sets the direction for the rest.

Should a first-time collector buy what they love or what might hold value?

Designers and advisers quoted here put love first. Dixon Smith Interiors' Mary Caroline Dansky says to invest in things you truly love, and UBS Art Advisory's Matthew Newton says to do your homework on one artist's best work.

Can you buy original art directly from the artist?

Yes. This studio sells original paintings direct to collectors and designers, with pre-ship videos of every finished work and commissions made for a specific wall.

Trade program and designer pricing · Start a conversation about a commission

Sources

Written by Angela Simeone

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