Welcome to our website which we hope you will find both informative and fun. I love beautiful things and am really a collector at heart, coming to this business more by accident than design. In the late 1960s, as a printmaking major at the University of Kansas, I fell under the spell of antiques collecting — quilts, furniture, folkart, ceramics, prints, paintings, Navajo rugs and oriental carpets — I loved it all and wanted it all. The trouble was I had no money, although $10 went pretty far at the Lawrence Salvation Army store. However, in that wonderful, pre-internet, pre-Antiques Roadshow era — before everyone was an instant know-it-all — an enthusiastic and hard working person with a bit of expertise, a hundred bucks and a functioning pickup truck could find some pretty nice stuff.

Young, single and footloose, I eventually became a working picker. Wary of the restraints on my freedom that a "store" would necessitate, I was happy to play my small, maverick role in the food chain of marketable popular culture. A quick profit of $50 was gladly accepted as I explored attics, barns, antiques stores and estate sales from Santa Fe to my hometown of Kansas City. One day a $75 oil painting, supposedly unsigned and undated, yielded up a quick $800 profit after the signature and date were discovered by simply removing if from the frame. Ummm, I can do this!... and I began concentrating on paintings. Paintings afforded both a boost to my bottom line and an enhancement of my professional standing. I was no longer an antique picker, I was a painting dealer! Plus they were so much more portable than a 500 pound walnut cupboard.

Through hard work, perseverance, and the advent of the Art Fair phenomenon, I eventually gained a following and a reputation — a good one I hope — but still not a store. I also acquired a wife, a family and a residence in Chicago, very un-Tom things to do. When I turned 50 my wife Janis (so much smarter than I'll ever be) told me to get a gallery or stop talking about it. And so, in May of 2000 the gallery whose website you have stumbled upon was born in the up-and-coming — now very trendy — West Loop neighborhood, where we prospered for 24 years. In July of 2024 we said goodbye to that location and moved to a new space in the — hopefully up-and-coming — West Town area.

As you will see we have a wide ranging program from vintage, mid-century painting to a wonderful group of contemporary artists, many based here in Chicago. We are known for our estate representation of (often overlooked) post-war Abstract Expressionists and we are constantly on the hunt for new gems. Meanwhile our contemporary program, headed up by gallery director Mary Beyer, has become a fixture of the Chicago art scene. So, click away and explore our website, there's lots to see... however, I can promise there is not a single walnut cupboard to be found.