The Magpie Instinct

The Diary of an Art Advisor

This newsletter was always meant to make the art world less opaque. Not to explain everything - some mystery is healthy - but to help you read the signs. To recognise the unspoken rules and the instincts that matter more. If you spend enough time in studios or simply watching which paintings people pause in front of, you begin to realise that collecting isn’t about knowing - it’s about noticing.

That brings me to Magpie’s Eye – a quietly brilliant show curated by Laura Bygrave and Alex Crocker, open now at the TCHC Viewing Room in Alton. It’s a show rooted in a certain kind of looking. The kind that isn’t linear or academic - the kind you develop by turning pages.

Both curators talk about how their first experience of art came through those oversized books many of us had - The Art Book, The World of Art. Encyclopaedic, alphabetised, and oddly democratic. You’d find Kirchner next to Krasner, Hesse next to Hawkins. Mood-shifts from one page to the next. No hierarchy, no essay, just images, textures, styles colliding in unexpected ways. It was in those strange pairings - that visual disorder - that their love of painting took root. Not in theory, but in touch - in the moment where paint does something illogical but alive.

The artists in Magpie’s Eye work like that too. They build paintings that show their construction - seams left visible, structures gently coming apart. There’s tactility, imbalance, a sense of something being assembled in real time. These are works that reward the glancing eye. The fragment-minded. The painter who pulls an idea out of a smudge, or the collector who loves a piece for the wrong reason - for its corner, or a single bent line.

It reminds me how collections form. Not through logic or category, but through accumulation. Through friction and gut feeling - like a dry-stone wall built from irregular shapes. That’s the real joy of it - and it’s something good galleries understand, even if they don’t always say so out loud.

Which brings me back to the purpose of this newsletter and the advice I mean to share with those interested in collecting art – if you want to be able to acquire those pieces that trigger a gut feeling, how do you ensure that you’re first in the queue? As a collector, how do you make a gallery want you?

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a piece for Plaster magazine responding to a reader’s question about gallery price secrecy - why you often ask the price of a work, only to be told it’s ‘available on request.’ It’s a peculiar ritual: cryptic, evasive, and occasionally maddening. But behind the smoke and mirrors lies something more than elitism or affectation. There is a reason for the coded behaviour, and it has less to do with excluding buyers than with protecting artists.

How do you get into the room where things are offered without hesitation, without hedging or theatre? How do you become someone galleries want to sell to? The current art market is suffering, and normal rules might not apply, but when things are more buoyant, it’s not just about money. Not at first. The art world is full of wealthy people who are treated with cordial distance, their interest noted but not prioritised. And it’s not simply about showing up. It’s about showing up in a way that resonates.

Buying art, especially from in-demand artists, is less like shopping for furniture and more like trying to adopt a particularly delicate rescue greyhound: anxious, sensitive, misunderstood, potentially life-changing. The gallery wants to know where it’s going, who it will live with, whether it will be loved or left to pace the back corridor. Will the work disappear into a guest loo in Mayfair, or turn up at auction in six months, discounted and discarded? Or will it enter a thoughtful collection, be lent to exhibitions, talked about, shared, and seen?

So how do you become that kind of collector? You need to be present - go to the openings. Attend the dinners. Smile and sip the cloudy wine. But what matters is not presence alone, but presence with gravity. That might mean saying something considered to the artist, or to the gallerist, that reveals close looking. It might mean buying something early, without fanfare, because it struck a chord. It might mean bringing someone whose attention carries weight. Or it might mean simply listening well - absorbing how the work is spoken about, and reflecting it back with clarity and care.

Galleries notice who sees clearly. Who pays attention. Who participates in the dialogue, not just the social theatre. Galleries do their homework. They look at your past acquisitions. They ask around. They’re not just deciding whether you can afford it - they’re asking what kind of home the work will go to. If you don’t yet have a collection, start one. Start modestly. Find artists you believe in and buy with sincerity. Don’t treat it like a shopping list. Treat it like a conversation. Build slowly and let your taste emerge.

And yes, people talk. The art world is not a sealed vault - it’s a village. Stories circulate. Reputations form. The way you behave around a ‘no’ can matter as much as what you do with a ‘yes.’ There is a code. But it’s not impossible to learn. Express interest before asking about availability. Ask about the artist’s process, context, ideas. If the work is sold, accept it with grace and ask to be kept in mind. Sometimes people are offered work simply because they handled disappointment with poise.

I’m aware that this might all sound a little obnoxious, but these are personal, unique pieces, made by individuals who dedicate their lives to the communication of some esoteric ideas.

The art world isn’t just a marketplace. It’s an ecosystem: relational, performative, collaborative. If you sit on a museum committee, write about exhibitions, lend to shows, or bring new collectors into the fold - that all counts. But so does subtler support: sharing the work, visiting the studio, taking the artist’s ideas seriously.

You don’t need to be powerful. But you do need to be generative. Galleries notice who amplifies, who advocates, who helps things grow, because in the end, a good gallery isn’t just selling. It’s placing. And placement matters. They want to know the work will be seen, understood, and sustained. That it’ll be looked after in every sense: materially, intellectually, contextually.

So if you want access - if you want to be part of that longer conversation – the best thing you can do is show that you care. That you’re not buying to impress, but to live with. To understand. To support the artist going forward. The collectors who gain trust aren’t always the loudest, or the richest. They’re the ones who show up with integrity. Who buy early, listen closely, talk generously, and help others find their way in.

This is a system, yes – strange, imperfect, occasionally exasperating. But it is built, at its best, to help artists thrive. And the collectors who understand that are the ones who shape the art world in quiet, lasting ways

And all of this, of course, loops back to Magpie’s Eye – a show that celebrates the instinctive, sidelong way that meaning often emerges. Not in grand statements, but in the slow accumulation of decisions. In a texture that doesn’t quite belong. In the pairing that shouldn’t work but does. It’s a reminder that the best collections, like the best paintings, aren’t built through strategy - they’re gathered through attention. Through patience. Through the quiet confidence that something will reveal itself, if you’re really looking.

If you’re curious about starting a collection, but feel like you need help, I’d love to hear from you.

Get in touch: www.blackbirdrook.com

Follow along on Instagram for insights and available works: @blackbird_rook