The 1937 sofa by Louis Icart
Courtesy of Avalon Ashley Bellos
Art is a fever dream, a whirlwind of color and passion that, when done right, will grab you by the throat and drag you through the most surreal corridors of your mind.
I was practically born into this madness, nurtured by the spirits 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 is not a landscape to be hung to blend into the background, or a pretty picture to soothe the soul. It is a demand, a challenge, a reflection of everything raw and real about human ideation.
The work of Louis Icart was the visual soundtrack of my childhood. These women, with their curves, their furs and their effortless elegance, were not just characters on the canvas – they were icons of a world where luxury and art were inextricably linked.
My mother was a walking embodiment of this world, with her colorful wardrobe—denim jackets with rhinestones, cowhide prints, and leopard prints that you couldn’t look away from. She understood that life, much like art, was about making a statement, declaring who you were and what you stood for.
However, it was not just the visual feast that shaped me; it was the way my mother taught me seeFor them, art was not just decoration – it was dialogue, revolution, a constant confrontation with the past, present and future.
She had this intense, almost predatory taste in art that would settle for nothing less than the extraordinary. Every piece in our house had a story, a heartbeat, a pulse that reverberated through the rooms like a bass line in a jazz set. She taught me that art is more than just brushstrokes on canvas; it is the essence of culture, the embodiment of the human experience in all its grotesque beauty.
Under her tutelage, I was baptized in the fire of art. I became an art lover, a dealer, an auctioneer, a writer – a madwoman on the hunt for the next piece that would give me an electric shock.
I became the product of those early days spent under the watchful eyes of Icart’s women and Picasso’s faces, of nights spent leafing through stacks of books on everything from Egyptian hieroglyphs to Greek urns. My mother’s passion for art was not just a hobby; it was a legacy that she passed on to me with the fierce determination of a lioness protecting her cubs.
What is art, after all, but the wild, uncontrollable beating of the human heart, the raw, unfiltered expression of all that we are and all that 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 regular contributor to amNY and The Villager.
