I lived without original artwork for most of my life, my mother decorating with Ethan Allen prints, a few street scenes from a vacation in Torremolinos. My own apartment in Manhattan, white walls and window grated, was bare, save for my husband’s Duke Ellington posters and my museum prints of Van Gogh’s Night Café and Matisse’s Woman in a Purple Coat. I love the night, taverns, billiards. A dear friend told me the purple coated woman looked like me.

These are the reasons for the importance of art in the home—to personalize, make a statement about you and your aesthetic awareness. My husband was a jazz musician, the posters signed by Ellington. Art is a very personal thing, reflecting one’s aesthetic and the importance of visual art in our everyday world. Yet there is no substitute for original artwork.

In Manhattan, a $10,000 bedroom set of my husband’s choice arrived from Ethan Allen. Victorian style prints, March and May florals, our children’s birth months, went over the bed. I started to spend less time at home and more in the museums. But it wasn’t until I remarried, having somehow retained the bedroom set, and moved to Savannah, Georgia, that I truly felt the need to collect original work.

Where to begin? I began small: first a studio sale, the artist needing to raise money to purchase a buffer swamp lot next door; then a Small Works exhibition hosted by the Savannah College of Art and Design. The work was inexpensive, not the studio artist’s best paintings and small works by graduate students. Yet, it was a start, and my eye was still naïve.

Then I sold the bedroom set for $3,000, replaced the head and foot boards for $150, the armoire and dresser for $400 combined. I street-picked a rocker and laid my bedding. I designated every other penny of additional profit for original art.

I sought a primary dealer.

Primary dealers represent contemporary works by living artists for whom they support, market, encourage and serve as mediator between artist and critic, curator, and collector. Given that your primary concerns in acquisition are quality and authenticity, one should choose a knowledgeable dealer, trusted among artists and collectors, alike. A good dealer will address your additional concerns of uniqueness and rarity of a body of work and will always vouch for the condition and archival nature of a particular piece.

Dealers must also possess an objective sense of judgment, honoring a collector’s own subjectivity. An inexperienced collector tends to turn to the dealer for his or her subjective view on a particular piece—not uncommon (and why, in my own gallery, I host Curator’s Choice, a group exhibition of my personal favorite works of art each year). But remember that you are the one who will live with a work of art every day of your life. You must love the piece. The dealer needs only to love and respect the body of work produced by any one artist. And to the dealer, never the artist, you can safely say something like “but my sofa is brown leather, the wall grey olive … I fear the blues.” Your dealer will accommodate your interior design needs. If you love a piece enough, you and your dealer will find the right spot for it.

The work you acquire out of love, rather than pure investment, must live in your home. It can be difficult to envision how art, hung meticulously on huge white gallery walls, will translate to your living space. There are dealers who set up shop in renovated living spaces—quite helpful in the translation. But don’t be afraid to ask to see a piece in your home before making a big leap, that is, if it is logistically possible and if you are quite serious about acquiring the piece. (If you are fortunate enough to find a good dealer, you do not want to tax the relationship.)

Most importantly, hang the piece where you will see and enjoy it. So many collectors (and artists) get hung up on the position of a piece in the home. One of my favorite paintings hangs in my kitchen, where I see it more than any other piece. Another two are privately sequestered in my bedroom. Yes, another is prominently displayed over my parlor sofa, yet I choose to sit on the chair opposite the work—so I can see it. Hang for your pleasure.

But is it the time to buy art? For those buying from secondary dealers, those who primarily represent collectors in a resale market, usually blue chip investment art, definitely. But the stakes are high. Yet even coming out of our recent recession, it is also time to buy, purely for your own aesthetic enjoyment and in support of the Arts. A good piece of work can transport you to a place money cannot buy—a place we all need to visit from time to time.

In Savannah, my ‘80’s Volvo wore only one bumper sticker: “The Arts Are Not a Luxury.” Art is a necessity. A good painting, photograph, sculpture, work on paper … a good piece of art will engage you over and over again. You will always find something new, whether it is a brush stroke previously unnoticed or the way the light has captured a quadrant of the work. I deal art out of my love and respect for the visual arts, a medium I could never come close to mastering. My home is not complete without my personal collection. I often come down to my gallery at night, a glass of wine in hand, dim the lights, sit on the sofa and pretend that collection, too, is mine.

What you choose to hang in your home should bring you joy and extend your aesthetic curiosity. The work will become a conversation piece for you and your guests. The work will only accentuate your home. Treat yourself and your hungry walls. For art is the feast of life.

Zoe Randall is the owner and director of Chace-Randall Gallery, 49 Main Street, Andes, NY. For her complete bio, visit www.chacerandallgallery.com.