Captain Outrageous Gallery
525 Caroline Street, Key West, FL 33040 (305) 304-1565 captainoutrageouskw@mac.com
Captain Outrageous GAllery, Elusive but worth it
There’s an elusive art gallery on Caroline Street that opens for a party one night a month. Otherwise, the new Captain Outrageous Gallery is open only by appointment. But once visitors gain entry, they know it is worth the wait.
Captain Outrageous, a prolific local artist, whose bright colors and sweeping, often comic designs adorn hundreds of bicycles and other vehicles around town, has taken a break from painting.
He has turned his attention to the business of art, and opened a gallery on the ground floor of a stately old home on Caroline Street. Dark hardwood floors and high ceilings frame the painting-filled walls. More than 150 original works in watercolor, oil and acrylic line the walls in neat rows.
“I wanted to keep it traditional with all original works by artists who, I think, have potential of being excellent investment art,” says the gallery owner who, years ago, officially changed his name to Captain Outrageous while running for mayor of Key West.
A turn-of-the-century baby grand piano acts as a table in the middle of the front room. On the 13th of each month, it is heaped with decadent appetizers and wine during the party that features live music and the gallery owner in a suit and tie.
Other than the monthly party from 7 to 10 p.m., Captain Outrageous tells the curious faces peering in the windows from the front porch that the gallery is open by appointment, or whenever the front gate is open.
A 1976 Mercedes convertible with “Captain Outrageous Gallery” lettered down the side is also evidence of the gallery owner’s presence.
“I’m trying to capture the air of what real art galleries that I appreciated in the East Village, used to be like,” says Outrageous, dangling an American Spirit cigarette above his trademark white beard.
The gallery currently features work by George Crosby, Martha Cook and Terry Clark. There are no Captain Outrageous works in the gallery.
“All the artists have some connection to Key West,” he says, and that connection is obvious in many of the paintings that feature the water, boats and architecture of Key West.
“I’m going to make this place perfect,” he says.
---Mandy Bolen
Key Wester Magazine
September 2005
Captain Outrageous Gallery
From Key Wester Magazine, March 2006
Riveting seascapes and original island street scenes line every inch of wall space in the Captain Outrageous Gallery at 525 Caroline Street. The gallery will celebrate its first anniversary on March 13.
Gallery owner Captain Outrageous (yes, it’s his real name) is also a well-known Key West artist. But the walls of the historic home have become a showcase featuring the work of other artists, namely New York painter George Crosby, who has returned to Key West for his second season at the Captain Outrageous Gallery.
“I think what I have here is rare,” Captain says, gesturing to his eclectic gallery and admiring the depth of Crosby’s work. “His dazzling night scenes or brilliantly colored sunrises and sunsets have impressed art lovers for the last three decades. He is described as a highly skilled realist with a modern sensibility.” Crosby is also available through April for commissioned work, including portraits or houses.
---- Mandy Bolen
An Outrageous Gallery With A Touch Of Class
By Dick Wagner
The paintings of George Crosby, which depict an island’s history in meticulous, color-vibrant detail, occupy most of the wall space at the new Captain Outrageous Gallery in an old Victorian home at 525 Caroline St. in Key West
“He is the best artist I have ever seen pass through Key West. I hope to get six more like him,”said Outrageous, a white-bearded eccentric in his mid-60’s who for years has given the town a certain image by painting circles, letters, stars, numbers and sexy women on Key West bicycles, cars – and just about anything.
Now the former Ohio entrepreneur who changed his name some time ago, has become an art impresario with Crosby as his star. “I want this to be a traditional, legitimate gallery,” Outrageous said of the four-room space that was recently a vitamin shop and long ago was a family’s living room. Two old pianos enhance the Soho-like ambience.
Captain is someone who dropped out [of real-world society] long ago and was re-energized,” said Crosby, a realist who has spent 28 winters painting in Key West. “We’ve come into each other’s orbit.”
In the Spring of 2005, Crosby, who paints from memory, worked for two months on the gallery’s eclectic front porch – “a hamster in a cage,” he said with a laugh – turning out more than 40 paintings.
“I paint all day,” he said on an April afternoon. “I’m here till 1 a.m., touching things up, tucking in the corners.” A friendly-faced, tropical-attired New York City native of 56, his feet were bare against the gallery’s hardwood floors. His casual demeanor belies an intellect he reveals through a rapid-fire vocabulary. “Vagaries” … “vicsisitude” … “banality” and extemporize” are words he easily tosses into conversations.
Educated at the University of Michigan and the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in New York, Crosby’s oils, acrylics and water colors now sell for thousands of dollars. His works have been exhibited in galleries in Manhattan; Boston; Provincetown, Mass; Chiapas, Mexico; Puerto Vallarta; Bay Harbor, Maine, and Tokyo. He once lived in a barn in Woodstock and now spends summers in Blue Hill, Maine.
One of Crosby’s most compelling paintings is a recreations of a fierce cock fight – a long-ago favorite of Key West betting pastime – complete with an islander’s black hand clutching green dollars in front of the wild-eyed birds with their deadly talons. He enjoys painting things that no longer exist – images that will survive after everyone who was associated with them is gone. “There’s something dignified in that,” he said. “It’s the work of the historian.”
(Dick Wagner is a former editor and writer at the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, Los Angeles Times and Key West Citizen, and currently writes for the Florida Keys Keynoter. He lives in Key West.)
