Collectors Rob and Eric Thomas-Suwall share highlights from the 2024 Fire Island Artist Residency Benefit Auction

The 2024 Fire Island Artist Residency (FIAR) benefit auction is special to its cause and curators. This year’s sale, which will take place at Artsy from March 15-28, is organized by collectors Rob and Eric Thomas-Suwall. The duo is known for amassing an enviable collection of work by female and mid-career female and queer artists, which they share on The Icy Gays on Instagram.

Rob (a surgeon) and Eric (a professor of political theory) have also channeled their artistic passions into supporting arts organizations that align with their vision of supporting LGBTQ+ and women artists. They first came into contact with FIAR through a studio visit with Chris Bogia, the artist who founded the non-profit organization. “We were big fans of his work for a while, and then we heard about the residency,” Eric recalls.

Since its launch in 2011 as the first venue dedicated to LGBTQ+ artists, FIAR has become known for its creative community. The four-week summer residency on New York’s Fire Island provides a select group of artists with free living and working space and programming, including visits by renowned artists and scholars such as Jeffrey Gibson, Derrick Adams, and Abigail DeVille. Past artists include Marcel Alcalá, Paolo Arao, Elijah Burgher, Moises Salazar and rising artists Willa Wasserman.

Bogia invited the Thomas-Suwalls to the board of FIAR a few years ago. “What we love about Fire Island is that sense of community, celebration and art,” said Rob. “That’s what FIAR does and we wanted to help support their mission.”

The 2024 FIAR benefit auction features 28 lots from an outstanding list of artists, many of whom are FIAR residents or artists from the Thomas-Suwall Collection. The sale includes works by Sara Anstis, Deborah Brown, Elizabeth Glaessner, Molly Greene and Robin F. Williams, among others.

In April, the couple will also open the exhibition “FULL DISCLOSURE: Selections from the Thomas-Suwall Collection” at the Plains Art Museum in Fargo, North Dakota, curated by Anne-Laure Lemaitre. “It’s really exciting to celebrate all these queer artists, feminist artists and galleries that have been a part of our story,” said Rob. “Many of the artists who are in this auction and have worked with FIAR will be in that show. We collectors are very excited to offer their works to a wider audience through the exhibition in the museum, but also through this auction.’

The auction, a testament to FIAR’s support and the caliber of artists participating in the residency, includes works starting at $1,000. “Not only do you get to experience something amazing, but you also get to support and celebrate this important artist residency,” added Rob.

Here, the pair share their top five sales highlights.

Corydon Cowansage’s entry into this auction marks a “full circle” for the pair. “He was the first artist we brought together,” Eric said. “It all started with Corydon.” The Philadelphia-born artist presents a new work on acrylic paper, Green, turquoise, purple (2024), which represents the artist’s innovative use of tones and textures.

“The way Corydon plays with color is amazing,” said Rob. “It brings biomorphic forms, which may be lips, which may be leaves, they are piled up, they are contained within the form.”

The pair noted that this piece is a relatively small example of the artist’s work, measuring just 12 x 9 inches compared to the much larger canvases he is familiar with today. “This is a viable version, and it’s accessible to a lot of people,” Rob said. “That’s one of the things we really love about this piece in particular.”

The job has a starting bid of $1,400. “You can get something incredible from an artist who’s doing something really exciting for less than you think, and he’s a perfect example of that,” added Rob.

Thomas-Suwalls was one of the “first” collectors to purchase the work of renowned painter Molly Greene, after discovering it at an exhibition by the traveling group “GIFC (Got It For Cheap)”.

“We bought one of his first paintings,” Rob said. “We were blown away by these biomorphic, futuristic, weird, surprising, surreal works.”

This acrylic work, Splinter (2024), exemplifies the artist’s signature style, merging surrealist elements with the natural world. “We couldn’t be more excited to have this as part of the auction,” said Rob. “There is this almost alien femininity in her work that feels hyper-contemporary, but also ancient in a way. I think the way they do these gradients is familiar but feels alien at the same time.”

The artist’s exploration of growth and nature coincides with the FIAR residency, he added: “These artists are able to come to live with nature and experience nature, and allow them to transcend it and maybe influence their practice in some way. And I think when you look at our collection, it’s definitely there’s that cross-section of nature. Molly’s work in particular is a great example of that.”

The couple discovered Sara Anstis at NADA Miami in 2019 after hearing about her work from a friend. “We ran to see this pastel on paper of these surreal women living their best lives in nature and it sold,” Rob recalls. After “waiting our turn” for some time, the pair were finally able to get an “awesome” pencil on paper, and have been fans of the artist as he rose in the art world, joining Kasmin in 2022.

For the couple, aconites (2024) depicts Rob as the artist “really coming into his own”.

“There’s this marriage between the softness of the cake and the imagery it’s portraying,” Rob said. “These women are friends or lovers or mother-daughter, and there’s an intimacy to the works.”

They noted that the depiction of nudity is unique—rather than voyeuristic—and that its theme of connection mirrors that of FIAR. “This moment of connection that you feel through work is again part of FIAR,” said Rob. “It’s about making those connections. It’s about bringing these artists and these women and men together and having those connections. Sara’s work is a great example of that, in a way, and we couldn’t be happier to be part of the auction.”

Robin F. Williams is an artist the couple met through New York’s PPOW gallery (which represents them). They first came across a drawing by the artist and it left quite an impression. “I lost my mind,” Eric recalled of the experience.

Williams, who has an upcoming retrospective at the Columbus Museum of Art in April, contributed the drawing No one’s Ambient Sound (2024), depicting a screaming figure in a forest. “When he paints he does all these amazing techniques. He’s like a wizard who paints, but with the drawings you can really see his hand in it, and I think there’s an emotion in the drawings that speaks as part of this process of making these paintings,” said Rob.

That emotional side comes to the fore in this work, he added: “There’s an honesty to this emotion that we all feel at some point and I think you can feel it in Robin’s drawings,” he said. “Robin is definitely exploring female anger in a way that’s so honest and moving. We couldn’t be more pleased to have this work as part of the collection.”