Inside a charming little art gallery in Rosemary Beach, Florida you might find yourself standing in front of a Marc Chagall painting…wearing a bikini, flip flops and smelling of sunscreen. Curate30A art gallery is special because it gives the viewer a casual environment…with that beach hair don’t care atmosphere. 

The walls in our Texas home host a collection of art that can best be described as eclectic and remind us of our past travels. The moment that I saw John Mark Gleadow’s painting In Good Taste at Curate30A, I could not stop smiling. It’s not the kind of art that will express a past vacation…it expresses my past cooking. There’s so much about it that’s personal to me. The same books that I’ve loved for years, titles that speak to me and especially seeing Julia, the queen of cuisine! Julia Child said, “I see every recipe as a little short story.” That’s what Gleadow’s art is to the viewer…short stories that provoke powerful memories. 

My son, Quincy, favored one called Forever Young because it had Charlie Brown and Where the Wild Things Are on two of the book spine paintings. Gleadow had a group of young children watching him in action…fascinated!

You might not ever guess that Gleadow is colorblind…his use of vibrant colors is something he’s known for.

I loved learning that John Mark Gleadow was influenced early on by Dali and VerMeer. “I fell in love with the beauty of their imagery and have always been in awe of their amazing gift for depicting reality, or their version of it. My desire is that my abilities would be used for creating works that are beautiful and that, when viewed as a whole, convince the viewer not only that what they’re seeing is real but that there’s truth in it.” 

Gleadow’s photorealistic images of iconic images we all know tell a story to the viewer and stirs up the past in the most delicious way.