David Witter

"Want to purchase beautiful oil paintings at a fraction of their retail value?" the TV teases you. "Come to Collector's Art, this weekend at the Tinley Park Holiday Inn Select, the Woodfield Hyatt Regency, the Pheasant Run Resort in St. Charles and the Marriott in Lincolnshire."

As you enter Lincolnwood's Purple Hotel at 10am on a Sunday morning, an entire family carries paintings out of the Collector's Art display room past you.

The conference-room-turned-gallery contains a large impressionistic depiction of a French street scene, priced at $1,470. You're also pleasantly surprised by a New York barroom reminiscent of work of the "Ash Can Gang" of the late 19th Century, and a scene at a jazz club done in the Harlem Renaissance style.

But as people from every conceivable race, age and ethnic group grouse through the paintings like kindergartners munching cookies, most of the subjects they consider center around wine bottles, wolves, horses, clowns, angels, tigers, fox-hunting scenes, cowboys, Indians, Italian gondola landscapes, little birds and flowers, all priced between $75 and $1,000. Almost all of the works are framed in ornate Louis XIV style, with gigantic faux gold rims that measure as much as six inches across.

"Look at those gorgeous roses," an elderly saleswoman says to another middle-aged female buyer. "They are so beautiful, it looks like you could almost pull them off of the painting."

The woman nods. "I think I'll take it. Could you put it in one of those fancy gold frames?"

As you leave, you pass another family of six, each carrying paintings and a sales card that reads, "Choose the paintings you've been looking for--at a price you never dreamed possible!"

(2005-03-01)

Also by David Witter

The Death of Neon
They were once considered an urban blight, an offense to all decent Americans
(2004-11-30)

Take me to the river
While it has yet to become Fisherman's Wharf or Baltimore's Chesapeake Bay, Chicago restaurants have begun to exploit Chicago's rediscovered waterfront resource
(2004-05-12)

A moll meal
While most of the culinary hangouts of the gangsters have vanished, a handful remain in more or less their original state
(2004-02-18)

Steel stomachs
Lack of change and strong ethnic identity has resulted in a neighborhood filled with unique bars and eateries
(2003-11-05)

Young Turks
(2003-08-13)

BAR NONE
(2001-04-26)

BRAIN MATTERS
(2001-01-11)

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