Naples Illustrated

TIME AND SPACE

How painter Paul Arsenault’s yen for travel turned into a longstanding business partnership with Art Allen—for art’s sake.

BY SARAH FK COBLE

PHOTOGRAPHY BY JERRY RABINOWITZ

Naples artist Paul Arsenault unabashedly pursues the soul of places, making a place for himself with his portrayals of soft-edged beach cottages, brackish waterways and vanishing historic icons of Southwest Florida; salty waterfronts and picket fences of Nantucket; ephemeral moments in sea and sky. In a career spanning four decades, Arsenault has become a quick study of light, space and time, and his brilliant-hued windows on the world, as much as his easygoing, adventurous spirit, strike a chord with collectors.

So in 1995 when Arsenault was inspired to take a six-week journey to the shores of coastal Vietnam a few months after the decades-long embargo was lifted, he planned the adventure with an innovative formula—a consortium of 10 backers would pay for the trip in exchange for paintings. Through a mutual friend, Arsenault’s proposal reached the ears of Art Allen, CEO of Allen Systems Group, the multinational software corporation headquartered in Naples. “Art ended up taking all 10 slots,” Arsenault says. “One of the great things about Art is that he didn’t want to hinder at all. He had requests, of course—places that he’d seen during his tour as a marine, including the coastal city of Nha Trang and the imperial city of Hue. And that opened up this whole magnificent country at this unique time in history.”

Arsenault made 35 paintings during that intense time, and although Allen initially signed on for 10 of those paintings, Arsenault remembers he bought 25. It was the start of a collection that has grown to more than 100 pieces in Allen’s ASG offices around the nation.

“It’s wonderful when I see that painting in my office that I was at that very location—he picked that very place almost exactly as I remember it,” Allen says. “That is the thing that continues to intrigue me, every painting has a story with it, people behind it. And it’s the same with me. Wherever I go, I like to immerse myself in the local culture, the local stories. I would suggest other businesses consider such a partnership, to share things that are important and special to them and their business.”

PATRONAGE

Of course, the relationship of artist as the eyes of the art patron isn’t new. For millennia, artists sketched the possibilities of faraway landscapes for their patrons, from the Land of the Dead to the shores of the New World. Still, it’s reassuring to know that even in the digital age that connection of artist and patron has not vanished beneath an online glut of stock images and travel photos.

Although giving back to the communities in which the Allen Systems Group is established has always been part of the business plan, Allen’s relationship with Arsenault has built up not just one artist’s portfolio, but a larger body of work that is a story in itself: the world at a given moment. “Art Allen is a community philanthropist for Naples and many things that aren’t quite so obvious,” Arsenault says. “The paintings have become a work as a unified whole. And art is always a way to draw attention to other world issues at any given time.”