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museums.) It was essential to her early success, long before
the age of 30, running the Gerald Peters Gallery in Dallas.
It propelled her out of there and into Carey Ellis Company,
a national art advisory firm, as the economy was crashing.
It also steadied her when she started her own operation,
consulting with clients such as the one whose handsome
house by Frank Welch I visited that afternoon.
Brown brick, heavily shaded by greenery, high and
overhanging, this home was built originally for John Dabney
Murchison, grandson of the oil magnate. “When I got the
job,” Welch told me, “I said this house has got to harmonize
with other houses in the neighborhood,” a part of Highland
Park he calls “the valley of kings.” Conceived as a big place
but with only nine rooms, the spaces are generous and
welcoming to art. The current owner has supplied quite a lot
of that, and Ashley has added her own inspiration, carefully
honed once she understood she would never be a great
painter herself.
Her touch was apparent in the living room where a
recent acquisition by Julian Schnabel from the Dallas Art
Fair throws wild, energetic insights across the great expanse
to a calming Sam Gummelt, mostly monochromatic white
tending to gray, announcing its own strength and durability.
Nearby are two early works on paper by Hans Hofmann,
In this highly personal assemblage whites keep coming
back like a song. A large geometric arrangement of squares by
Terrell James radiates the dining room. (Ashley had intended
it to go where the Schnabel is now, so the Gummelt would
have someone to talk to.) A small collage by Dan Rizzie
is matched by another at the far end of the foyer. One has
stacked sheets of painted wood, thick as a relief. The clarity
of white is a soothing counterpoint to the explosion of David
Bateses everywhere, suffusing the atmosphere with the
power of accumulated knowledge. Bates simply knows more
than many artists working today about the inner imperatives
of the natural world. “There are no still lifes in this house,”
Ashley explained. “It’s man versus nature, man with nature.”
Bates explored the primordial swamps and cypress trees
near Caddo, the only natural lake in Texas. All that is here
in this house. But an unexpected object of his interest is an
enormous owl, presiding over the landing and best seen from
the top of the stairs. It has a special resonance for Ashley
Tatum, who admitted she actually likes animals better than
things. She also values owls more for their “predatory skill”
than the wisdom for which they’ve been relegated to the
status of silent, skeptical observers.
