It’s your first time in Aspen, and your first ArtCrush. What’s on your mind as you arrive in a place where the air is thin and the art scene is thick?
Mixing art, nature and great people is a uniquely wonderful combination that Aspen provides. I’ve heard so much about the place and I am excited to explore.
Rumor has it you never wear shoes. Is that a personal philosophy, a fashion statement, or just good collecting energy?
The art world can sometimes be a bit stuffy and I enjoy being irreverent. But there is something quite enjoyable about feeling the cold hard floor of a museum with one’s bare feet and looking at a great work of art.
As an advisor, instinct plays a big role. What’s the first thing you look for when considering a work?
When one spends so many waking hours digesting art you develop a natural reaction to things that are innovative and radical. It stops you in your tracks rather than blending in. That gut reaction followed by careful study of the artist in general is a great way to follow leads.
Alia Ahmad
Finood 3 (Branches of A tree) | ٢ فنود
2025
Oil on canvas
29 1/8 × 31 1/2 in
Ahmad paints with a kind of atmospheric logic. The composition moves between growth and decay, clarity and haze, tradition and transformation. I responded to the way her work feels rooted in place while also inventing its own internal rhythm. It’s not just about memory, it’s about the texture of memory, and how it shifts across landscape, culture, and light.
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Harold Ancart
Cyprés, 2024
Oil on canvas
55 × 44 × 2 in
Harold Ancart uses the familiar natural form of a tree to explore his innovative pictorial language, hovering between figuration and abstraction. Painted with raw, graphic immediacy and set against a vibrantly flat field, the tree becomes a meditation on color and formal tension. As with much of Ancart’s work, it’s less about landscape than about the act of looking—inviting us to look, and to get lost.
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Kevin Beasley
Envelope I (Release), 2025
Polyurethane resin, Sharpie transfer, chipped wood furniture, raw virginia cotton, confettied garments, confettied pillowcases, confettied house dresses, confettied t-shirts, fiberglass, altered t-shirts, altered house dress, carbon fiber, rebar
52× 72 × 1 1/2 in | 132.1 × 182.9 × 3.8 cm; diptych, each: 52 × 36 × 1 1/2 in | 32.1 × 91.4 × 3.8 cm
This work is pure density, both in material and memory. Resin, rebar, cotton, and altered garments are compacted into something that feels physical and emotional at once. It resonated because it challenges what painting can hold, and how it can carry weight, literal and symbolic, without relying on the figurative.
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Megan Marrin
JMF (Nesting Tables), 2024–25
Oil on canvas
55 1/2 x 42 inches (141 x 106.7 cm)
Marrin’s piece feels like a meditation on form and control. Inspired by Jean-Michel Frank’s interiors, the composition is spare but deeply intentional. It’s formally restrained yet psychologically charged, with a quiet fixation on surfaces, structure, and the spaces we inhabit.
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Ronny Quevedo
body and sol, 2022
Metal leaf and gold leaf on pattern paper
45 3/4 x 22 1/4 inches (116.2 x 56.5 cm)
49 1/4 x 26 3/8 x 1 5/8 inches (125.1 x 67 x 4.13 cm) (framed)
This piece is deeply personal and conceptually sharp. Quevedo fuses pattern paper and gold leaf to honor his mother’s work as a seamstress. The materials feel deliberate and full of contrast. For me, it’s the kind of abstraction that reveals more the longer you live with it.
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Mary Stephenson
Twin Shell, 2025
Oil on Linen
33 3/8 x 37 1/2 inches (84.8 x 95.3 cm)
There’s a surreal tension in this painting. The central form flirts with figuration but never lands, inviting interpretation while resisting definition. It’s enigmatic in the best way.
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