In elementary school, I was that kid who got lost in the I Spy books, spending hours on end exploring them. For some strange reason, I wouldn't look for any of the assigned objects; instead, I would simply let my eyes wander through the mesmerizing drawings. L’Enfant Gallery is the ultimate I Spy experience. When I stumbled into the gallery, it felt as if I had walked into an I Spy art page, and the pages kept turning. My childhood dream was fulfilled. After exploring the four floors of masterpiece after masterpiece, my mind stopped, and with friends around me, I simply sat on the top stairs of the gallery basking in a feeling of satisfaction. While staring at the most beautiful chandelier, I felt numb to reality, numb to my emotions. In place of my emotions, I felt a strange feeling of otherworldliness. 

While basking in this feeling of otherworldliness, I felt as if I was outside of time, as if I could stay on those stairs for the rest of my life. Reality only set in when one of my friends declared, “We need to go.” After leaving, I kept going back for more: returning to the gallery three more times, even bringing others with me in hopes that they would feel this same out-of-body experience. Each time I left, I snapped back to reality. However, my mind still wandered back to the gallery, each time creating more questions that lingered with me for weeks on end. Why did this gallery feel like home? What kept me coming back? How did this I Spy book enter into my reality? Why did this art, and this particular curation, have such a lasting effect on me? Why was it so different from any of the famous art museums I could have chosen to go to? In search of peace of mind (as well as an excuse to return to the gallery) I asked to interview the owner of L’Enfant Gallery, Peter Colasante. Our one-hour interview began with answers to the question: How? When exploring the

gallery with friends, all we could think of was, How: How did this all happen? How did these works even get here? Who is crazy enough to build something like this? Peter Colasante is crazy enough. Peter’s character and demeanor embodies a welcoming smile. There’s a certain light in his eyes, a light of love for his work. Peter is 75 years old but speaks with the passion and ambition of an aspiring 18-year-old. With dreams of being an actor, Peter planned to take the world by storm but soon realized his talents most likely lay elsewhere. While struggling in his acting pursuits, Peter happened to stumble upon what came to be his profession for the next 50 years. 

A chance encounter with Fred Maloof, a wealthy oilman, timberland owner, and art collector, lent Peter a sort of apprenticeship under Maloof. After teaching Peter in his mansion-turned-art museum, Fred unfortunately died; but not before selling six paintings to Peter for 1% of the works’ true values. With these paintings, Peter began his career. To this day, Peter speaks of Fred as a true companion, mentor, and inspiration for his work. Peter expresses the same child-like wonder I feel in L’Enfant Gallery when he speaks of Fred’s collection. Peter described L’Enfant Gallery as a “fraction of the masterpiece” that was Fred’s collection. He cherishes the remaining paintings Fred sold to him, housing them in his own artistic wonderland.

However, through all these pressures, artists still find their work beautiful and worthwhile. This thought stirred the question: What kept Peter determined throughout all these challenges? Peter began his answer with the simple phrase: “The mystery of it all.” He described his work as being involved in a mystery, and he is determined to see how it plays out. Peter provided an image for this fascinating answer: he described his work as a web he enjoys connecting and continuing to weave. He highlighted his work with upcoming artists as a testament to this web. Artists would often sell or even gift him works which he would sell while also promoting the artist. Peter does less of this kind of work today, but he still believes himself to be in the thick of the mystery. As the plot thickens, Peter’s creative vision evolves and cements itself.

In Hannah Wohl’s Bound by Creativity, she researches artists’ and curators’ creative visions and how this creativity affects aesthetic judgment. Wohl defines creative vision as, “A bundle of recognizable and enduring consistencies within a body of work” (4). In order to understand Peter’s creative vision, we must first examine how he curates or organizes his gallery, how he chooses pieces to add to his collection, and how he approaches selling his pieces. Peter’s Gallery has a feeling of being one big mess, yet it is a beautiful mess, and most definitely has the aesthetic principle of fittingness; but how? How can something that appears so disordered have a lasting feeling of orderliness at the same time? As I walked through the I Spy book, I felt my eye wandering, yet also drawn from one piece to the next in a highly curated manner. When I described this strange phenomenon to Peter, his facial expression slowly changed into a childlike, mischievous smile, as if to say, “Aha you have fallen into my trap.” Peter described his original idea of design and curation as nonconforming. However, as if laughing at his youthful naivety, he dubbed his past self a “non-conformist who conforms.” His original approach to curation was that of a museum, his art was ordered by date and by art movement: each room housing its own time period and movement. However, Peter soon grew into his non-conformist ideology. He describes his new and still present curation style as “out of place.” While conducting this interview, contemporary art, Impressionism, and realism were all sharing the same wall behind my head. Peter described this contrast as eye-catching and an intentional design choice intended to provoke a sense of wonder. He motioned to a Persian rug beneath our feet and illustrated the importance of color by pointing at a light red on the rug which was identical to the red on the contemporary work above it. Peter emphasized color over design. He claimed that what draws people to the art of his gallery is the color, or even the lack thereof, in some of the works. Peter energetically described the paintings surrounding us in terms of their powerful color. He described how this color is more significant than time periods or even artistic movements. Color is the non-conformist which transcends any time period and any movement. To chase after the beauty of color throughout the “artistic timeline” is what makes art so fascinating. It took Peter time to cement his creative curation and as Hannah Wohl describes it, only after “extensive exposure to the art world” was Peter able to create his vision (108).

A large part of Peter’s exposure to the art world came through buying and selling artwork. Peter described the process as nerve-racking and risky stating that “it is dangerous.” He described the process of buying and selling as “investing in someone’s psyche.” He always found it difficult to choose art for others, yet that’s his profession. However, through all of this uncertainty, Peter stood by his principle. When considering which art to add to his creative vision, Peter would ask himself if it spoke to him personally. His principle was: “If I liked it, I bought it.” He described every work he purchased as an “extension of himself.” He would not attempt to get into people's psyche too much, but would rather focus on purchasing beautiful art, believing that beauty sells.

After understanding how Peter organizes his curated gallery, and how he approaches purchasing and selling work, I began to understand his creative vision. Peter’s creative vision, in other words, the enduring themes throughout his gallery, is based more on an interpretation of art, than on formal elements within the art. Peter describes his gallery as a “new universe,” and I could not agree more. Upon entering the gallery, I felt as if my world had changed and my responsibilities floated away. Peter described his hope that every person who enters his gallery can at least for a moment “leave the world behind” and enter into a new universe; a universe that is only focused on beauty. L’Enfant Gallery’s mission is to be a remedy for the cold feelings of the outside world. A remedy for political tension, for war, for hate. The creative vision of the gallery centers upon this idea. Peter hopes that each painting he chooses to place in his gallery can create this feeling of otherworldliness.

This process happens over and over again as more and more viewers gaze upon the beauty of the piece. Soon enough, a painting will collect enough “energy” from those becoming dumbfounded by its beauty, that the painting will sell. Peter has seen his theory at work: seeing customers gaze upon the same painting throughout the day, and the very next day, the painting is sold. Peter, with a big smile across his face, stated that it’s “the soul that weaves it [the art/the process of dealing] together.” The soul is what unites people through art, through this energy field living in each painting. This idea explains why I continue to come back to L’Enfant Gallery, and why I feel the need to bring those closest to me along for the ride. As Cain puts it, we are all longing for “profound beauty, deep connection, and transcendence” (2).

With a potential buyer entering the shop and adding to the energy field of a certain painting, Peter had to go conduct his business of selling beauty. As Cain describes a musical artist “giving you a transcendence delivery system," Peter had to deliver a transcendent experience to his customer (66). For this reason, similar to my fleeting transcendent explorations of the gallery, my interview had to come to an end. I was faced once again with reality and those lingering questions. Walking back to the metro, I stumbled across a Catholic Church and was pulled in; while wondering: Is the gallery linked to the Divine, and why? I hold that all beautiful art links us to the Divine, through art we are transported to a refuge, to another universe; for an instant, we are home in our Creator's arms. Beauty provides us with a glimpse of heaven, and believe it or not, there is heaven all around us, even in a cluttered antique shop that I very well could have just passed by. The peace and joy that floods my mind when I enter L’Enfant Gallery is only a glimpse of God’s beauty and joy. Art is an avenue through which we can transcend reality, or as Peter puts it, we can escape for a brief moment from the cold world beyond the gallery doors. Art is more than just a fleeting moment of “awe,” it is what we do with these transcendent experiences that define us, that defines art. A glimpse of heaven does no good if we do not share it with others. Share this heaven by bringing others to places like L’Enfant Gallery; share this heaven by welcoming everyday beauty into our lives; share this heaven by  attaching our souls to others. Perhaps by doing this, we can make the other universe which is L’Enfant Gallery, a part of our own universe. L’Enfant Gallery is welcoming. The cluttered feel of artworks laid upon one another envelopes its guests in a warm embrace; imagine, for an instant, a world similar to this “gallery feel,” a world in which beauty surrounds us and holds us close. That is a world worth living in. That is a universe we all long to call home.

Works Cited

Cain, Susan. Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole (New York: Crown, 2022).

Wohl, Hannah. Bound by Creativity: How Contemporary Art Is Created and Judged (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2021).