Beyond New York and LA: Collecting Art in the Southwest
Collectors are looking beyond New York and LA. Discover why Phoenix and the Southwest are attracting attention in contemporary abstraction.
For decades, New York and Los Angeles have dominated the American art market. But in 2025, many collectors are asking: What lies beyond the coasts? Increasingly, the answer is the Southwest, where cities like Phoenix are emerging as vital hubs for contemporary art.
As a Phoenix-based abstract painter, I’ve experienced firsthand how the Southwest fosters creativity. The desert landscape inspires boldness—vast skies and stark contrasts become metaphors for openness and experimentation. Here, artists are free to explore without the heavy commercial pressures of established art capitals.
For collectors, this shift presents a remarkable opportunity. Acquiring works from Southwest-based artists today means engaging with voices that are on the rise but not yet saturated by market hype. History has shown that discovering artists outside traditional centers often yields not only aesthetic value but long-term financial growth.
My own work reflects this dual positioning: deeply influenced by global modernism and the legacies of Souza, Picasso, Rothko, and Basquiat, yet firmly rooted in the cultural and geographic specificity of Phoenix. By combining string-based painting techniques with CNC-sculpted panels, I create works that are both local in spirit and global in reach.
For gallerists, championing Southwest artists provides the chance to shape a new narrative. As collectors broaden their horizons, exhibitions that highlight regional innovation will stand out in a crowded field.
The art world is no longer confined to a few cities. By looking beyond New York and LA, collectors are finding vibrant, original voices that redefine what contemporary abstraction can be. And in the Southwest, those voices are only getting stronger.
