Kobo Inc. CEO Mike Serbinis (left) and Indigo Books & Music Inc. CEO Heather Reisman Raina+Wilson 
Think Small
Bill Clarke has never spent more than $2,500 on art. He is living proof that you don’t have to be a millionaire to buy it and that you can be a serious collector with only a limited budget.
Although Clarke moonlights as executive editor of Magenta Magazine, an international art journal, and grew up in a collecting family (his father owns coins from the medieval period), he only started visiting galleries in 2001 after taking a job in the production department of Canadian Art magazine. “I became transfixed by the creativity that routinely crossed my desk,” says Clarke, “and began to think, I want to live with that.”
Two years later, Clarke made his first major purchase, Untitled (cat and rabbit), a drawing by Winnipeg-born Marcel Dzama, after seeing his work exhibited at Toronto’s contemporary art gallery, the Power Plant. (He paid $1,000 for the piece, though it’s now worth more than double that amount.) Clarke was drawn to Dzama’s art because it made him laugh and because it “was by someone my age.” But it helped him come to an important realization. Works on paper are usually far more affordable than paintings, but no less compelling. “Tiny pieces can be very powerful,” says Clarke. “They draw you in because you have to get up close to look.”
Today Clarke is a recognized expert on works on paper. It’s a subject to which he devotes his spare time and income, growing his collection, which he hangs tightly packed in a salon style in his one-bedroom flat. “I could have a closet full of expensive clothes or I could buy art,” he says. “I buy the best that I can with the money I’ve got.”
Sara Angel
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