The Buying Game
Yes, you can afford great Maine art on a less-than-great budget. Just ask the Gleasons.
By Edgar Allen Beem
Despite the twenty years Dennis and Martha Gleason have spent developing their art gallery into one of the most important in Maine, they both chuckle over the irony that Gleason Fine Art remains something of a mystery to many of their fellow Boothbay Harbor merchants - not to mention the general public."They don't know what we do or how we do it," Martha says. "In fact, they can't imagine art sells in the first place."
In a bustling, forthright, tourist town where trinkets, T-shirts, ice cream, and shore dinners abound, local folks don't blink at travelers plunking down a few hundred dollars for a motel room and a meal, a few dollars for souvenirs, maybe even splurging on a whale-watching cruise, but the idea that anyone would spend a few thousand dollars on a painting somehow remains unimaginable.
