Art is a fever dream, a whirlwind of pigments and passions that, when done right, grabs you by the throat and drags you through the most surreal corridors of your mind.
I was practically born into this insanity, cradled by the ghosts of a thousand artistic visions, and I owe it all to my mother, Sue Avalon Bellos — a woman who redefined what it meant to live and breathe art. Art has never been about being polite. It’s not a landscape hung to blend into the background or a pretty picture to soothe your soul. It’s a demand, a challenge, a reflection of everything raw and real about human ideation.
Louis Icart’s work was the visual soundtrack to my childhood. Those women, with their curves, their furs, their effortless elegance, were not just figures on canvas — they were icons of a world where luxury and art were inextricably linked.
My mother, with her colorful wardrobe—denim jackets beset with rhinestones, cowhide prints, and leopard patterns that dared anyone to look away — was a walking embodiment of that world. She understood that life, much like art, was about making a statement, about declaring who you were and what you stood for.
It wasn’t just the visual feast that molded me, though; it was the way my mother taught me to see. To her, art wasn’t just decoration—it was dialogue, revolution, an ongoing conversation with the past, present, and future.
She had this intense, almost predatory taste in art that refused to settle for anything less than extraordinary. Every piece in our home had a story, a heartbeat, a pulse that echoed through the rooms like a bassline in a jazz set. She taught me that art is more than just brushstrokes on canvas; it’s the distillation of culture, the embodiment of the human experience in all its grotesque beauty.
Under her guidance, I was baptized in the fires of art. I became an art lover, a dealer, an auctioneer, a writer—a madwoman on the hunt for the next piece that would send that electric shock through my system.
I became the product of those early days spent under the watchful eyes of Icart’s women and Picasso’s faces, of nights flipping through stacks of books on everything from Egyptian hieroglyphs to Grecian urns. My mother’s passion for art wasn’t just a hobby; it was a legacy, one she passed down to me with the fierce determination of a lioness protecting her cubs.
In the end, what is art but the wild, uncontrollable beating of the human heart, the raw, unfiltered expression of everything we are and everything we hope to be? And what is a mother like mine but the ultimate muse, the architect of dreams, the curator of a world where art is not just seen but lived, breathed, and consumed with the same reckless abandon as the artists who create it?
Avalon Ashley Bellos is executive director of marketing and communications for DTR Modern Galleries, and a frequent contributor to amNY and The Villager.
