Our Collection
For over 40 years, the Charleston Renaissance Gallery has been hailed as the nation's foremost dealer in fine art of the American South.
We are in a time of regional preferences, heritage seeds and produce, landrace breeds and their preparation. This is a time of doing things the way our forbears did and doing them close to home. I treasure my early years in the country wishing only that I could make fried pies and cornbread like Papa did, wishing too that I had the garden he did and from which we were fed. I do not have the garden nor the skills but the memory of those things has helped to mold me as a Southerner.
I do not claim proficiency in any of these heritage pursuits though have tried my hand with Sea Island Cotton and curing the underbelly of Ossabaw Blacks and neither with great success. I do like to sit and tell a story and enjoy writing and have worked to put some of those stories down. Paintings are my business and paintings are stories and though many are narrative and suggest meaning to those who see it sometimes takes the addition of context to provide interest. Fifty something stories and counting, the tales of my travels and those I have met are offered here as backdrop, prologue and platform. Yes, the paintings tell the stories but I am privileged to help them along by telling my story, the Story of Southern, in pictures.
– Robert M. Hicklin, Jr.