What Sets Charting Transcendence Apart

I’m an unusual, experienced connoisseur who came to art after 25 years of exploring the world in my own unique way. 

I’ve been keen on art for years. I trained as an artist. I’ve also worn hats as a diplomat, businessman, and manager.  

For years I’ve also been creating transcendent experiences for people around art.  Doing this brings me joy and unleashes my superpower, which is also the name of my company. 

Charting Transcendence stands apart from other firms, run by “experts,” insiders, and salespeople who have built careers built on typical credentials and success.  

I can identify people and institutions who, thanks to market dynamics of demand and scarcity of supply, are actively involved in determining what kind of art people will pay a lot of money for.

Many rely on opacity to protect their profit margins, enhance their own prestige, or inflate their own egos.  Occasionally, they’re even willing to cheat and lie to defend the territory they’ve staked out.

I’ve known this for years, appalled and dismayed. These are not the games that I care to play. 

More commonly, though, they are simply creating hype, often embellishing or fabricating stories around artists, whether reputable or not.  

Some of this art is good, and some of it will appreciate in price. I understand this and can certainly pick art that is more likely to do this. 

Like them, I’ve been following the art world for years, completed masters-level studies in contemporary arts with honors, and have traveled far and wide to see the most breathtaking art in the world.  

Yet for as long as I can remember, I’ve felt apart from my peers. 

Different. In how I see the world, and how I navigate it.

You see, my brain works differently from other people. 

I’ve known this, on some level, for many years. But I’ve only come to deeply understand it – and embrace it – much more recently.

The way I connect art to time, place, and sensation.

The things that draw my attention and the journeys that they have inspired me to embark upon.

The way I dance with an intoxicating joy and beauty in things, both exquisite and banal.

These are gifts that I’ve learned to work with and apply as differentiators in the art business.

I’m proud to call myself an “insider” to the art world who retains the perspective of an outsider, which permits me to clearly see the systems – and the multi-billion dollar market that fuels them – that others have constructed.

Yet at the end of the day, I’m more interested in what kind of art is going to move you every time you look at it.

For as much art as I see, my views and tastes are always evolving. Yet my conviction remains in knowing in the moment the difference between art that gives someone a transcendent experience and art that is “hot” because other people have created hype.

I can track both, but where other art advisors are going to direct you towards the hype, I will guide you consistently to art that matters to you.

I navigate both tracks so that you don’t miss out on the potential for your art to appreciate, yet I will never lose sight of the goal of finding art that will create a transcendent experience for you.

Through Charting Transcendence I curate art experiences for people who want to learn more and surround themselves with art they love.  And I’m a lot better than others at finding and directing people towards it.

This is the way my brain works: I actually care about what is “good” art – “good” being defined as art that is going to give you a sense of transcendence when you live with it.

It’s just one of a number of things that differentiate Charting Transcendence from every other art advisory firm in operation today.