Kelowna gallery at the centre of serious allegations from 'distraught' artists
Kelowna’s small, tight-knit art community is being rocked by serious allegations against a gallery that has been a staple of the Pandosy neighbourhood for 40 years.
At the centre of those allegations are Cyndy and Jay Denyar, owners of Tutt Street Art Gallery since 2021.
The duo is accused of not paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to artists, a total made up of both unpaid commissions and unaccounted pieces.
BC artist David Graff filed a civil claim against the Denyars in June 2023 and tells NowMedia that the gallery owes him around $65,000.
That figure is the standard 50% cut of the $130,000 worth of artwork he claims is either in the gallery’s possession or already sold, a number that has decreased from $180,000 since legal action was taken last summer.
“Despite demand, the defendants failed and refused, and continue to refuse, the delivery of the unaccounted artwork to the plaintiff,” the civil claim reads.
Graff’s working relationship with Tutt Street Art Gallery began around a decade ago and he says it remained positive even after the Denyars took over.
The Denyars’ legal response to the civil claim said there were “no complaints” from the artist until December 2022, which is when Graff says the relationship began to sour.
The response also stated that the gallery had “no written contract with any of the artists” and their routine business was “simply to display and sell on consignment the artwork artists chose to deliver to the gallery.”
Issues between Graff and Tutt Street Art Gallery were bookended by the sale of two significant pieces in the fall of 2022 and spring of 2023.
The latter involved an in-person confrontation between the two sides at the gallery and led to Graff filing a civil claim a few weeks later.
While there has been no progress on the legal front since last summer, the gallery continues to maintain that the allegations against them are “false.”
A recent email from the gallery to KelownaNow said “there is no story” and they are “a small business trying to make our way in this (tough) retail market.”
KelownaNow has learned of several other artists who have come forward with allegations against Tutt Street Art Gallery.
Also embroiled in the situation is Progressive Fine Art, a long-standing international distributor and publisher of fine art based out of Ontario.
Company president Michael Havers claims the gallery owes them nearly $150,000 and says he can only speculate how big the overall number is between Progressive Fine Art, Graff and other artists.
A veteran of the art industry for around four decades, Havers calls this issue the biggest of its kind that he has “ever come across or heard about.”
Havers, like Graff and other artists, has taken these complaints to the Kelowna RCMP and KelownaNow has confirmed local police have received several reports about the gallery from artists.
While the situation is on the Kelowna RCMP’s radar, there is no active criminal investigation and none of the allegations against Tutt Street Art Gallery have been proven in court.
Graff’s grief
After several happy years being represented by Tutt Street Art Gallery when it was under the ownership of Martina Kral, Graff says things stayed that way when Cyndy and Jay Denyar took over.
His work was featured in a pair of solo exhibits at the gallery in 2021 and 2022, but he tells KelownaNow that the conflict between the two parties began shortly after the second show.
Graff says the second solo show led to a “fairly big” commissioned piece that he worked diligently to complete and deliver to the client in October 2022.
Three months passed, however, and Graff had still not received his 50% plus GST cut of the sale through Tutt Street Art Gallery.
“In January 2023, I started to realize I hadn’t been getting any money from Tutt Street,” he explained. “I was very aware that I hadn’t been paid for that commission yet.”
According to Graff, that’s when Cyndy started becoming evasive, not returning calls or responding to other forms of communication and delivering a myriad of excuses when she did.
Graff says it was only when he threatened the gallery with legal action that he received the commission for the October 2022 piece, but there were allegedly still several payments outstanding.
In March 2023, Tutt Street Art Gallery sold a large Graff piece to Matt Reynolds and Newport Private Wealth in Kelowna for $10,500 plus GST.
When weeks went by and Graff didn’t receive payment for that painting, he decided it was time to travel from Bowen Island to Kelowna and investigate things for himself on May 30, 2023.
With two friends by his side, including a retired RCMP officer, he first went to the Newport Private Wealth to ensure that the piece was there and Reynolds had paid for it in full. (KelownaNow has obtained an email from Reynolds confirming that fact).
Armed with that information, Graff went across the street to the nearby Tutt Street Art Gallery, walked in and told Cyndy he was going to remove his work from the gallery and she would be hearing from his lawyer.
“She looked me straight in the eye and said ‘oh, Matt didn’t pay for that painting,’” Graff claimed.
Graff was only able to collect a handful of his pieces, less than half of what he says was meant to be at the gallery, and some were tucked away in a back storage room.
It was only a few days later that Graff filed his civil claim in the Supreme Court of British Columbia, seeking damages for unaccounted artwork allegedly in the Denyars’ possession.
Originally, he was seeking just over $90,000 for the $180,000 worth of artwork he was missing, but those numbers have decreased to $65,000 and $130,000 after he received some of it back.
Graff, like other artists facing the same alleged issues with Tutt Street Art Gallery, doesn’t know if his unaccounted artwork has been sold or not.
“There is no story here”
Cyndy’s recollection of May 30, 2023, greatly differs from Graff’s, as outlined in the legal response to the civil claim filed by the Denyars in August 2023.
“Mrs. Denyar was alone in the gallery when suddenly the plaintiff quickly and aggressively entered the gallery with two large men without permission nor any prior notice,” it reads.
“The two large men with the plaintiff were not known to Mrs. Denyar; they were larger than the plaintiff and significantly larger than Mrs. Denyar.”
It says that Cyndy was under the impression the gallery was being robbed and Graff was “angry to the point of being out of control, yelling and screaming at Mrs. Denyar.”
While Graff denies those allegations against him, the response continues on to say Cyndy was “shaking in fear,” “threw up in the street” and had to close the gallery once the three men left.
Once the civil claim was filed in June 2023, all communication between Graff and the Denyars shifted to their legal representation.
When this story first came to KelownaNow’s attention, a request for comment from the Tutt Street Art Gallery prompted the following email response from a woman named Carrie Harper.
“These allegations are false. If an artist is unhappy with [the] gallery they should talk to [the] gallery for resolution,” the email read.
“Please do not proceed with [the] story as it would destroy the gallery, which has been in operation since 1984, and the damage will be devastating to a small business.”
The response from Harper, an assistant at the gallery, said the artist is “obviously intent on destroying the gallery and causing trouble” and “there is no story.”
A few days later, Cyndy repeated her denial of the allegations, echoing Harper’s response that Graff should have talked to them directly if he was unhappy.
Cyndy added that she had not talked directly to Graff since the civil claim was made last summer and claimed the gallery is in constant communication with Progressive Fine Art, with no indication of any issues.
Those remarks came in a brief, unscheduled meeting at the KelownaNow office on Tuesday, July 16. The gallery is yet to respond to KelownaNow’s request for an in-depth phone interview.
Not an isolated case
Graff is not the only artist who has come forward with allegations against Cyndy and Jay Denyar and Tutt Street Art Gallery.
Reimer says she’s fortunate enough to have retrieved her art from the gallery, but it was a frustrating process, she claims, full of “excuses” from Cyndy.
“The process was made difficult by the gallery owners because phone messages and emails were ignored; promises for exhibits and a show were made but never acted upon,” Reimer said.
“I live on Vancouver Island and making a special trip there to retrieve my artwork cost close to $1,000. It was difficult and aggravating, very unprofessional.”
While Reimer is no longer seeking unaccounted artwork or compensation from Tutt Street Art Gallery, that is certainly not the case for Progressive Fine Art.
Havers and office manager Brenda Mitchell say they’ve spent over 1,000 hours trying to get nearly $150,000 worth of artwork or compensation back from the gallery over the past 18 months.
Mitchell tells KelownaNow that their issues with Cyndy and Jay Denyar started with minor problems, such as late payments and unreported sales, but has “escalated” to much more.
“Despite multiple attempts to retrieve our works, we have been met with excuses and resistance,” she claimed.
Mitchell says they’ve been faced with “avoidance tactics” like ignored calls, changed bookkeepers, unfulfilled promises and even locked doors when they try to resolve the issue in person.
Most recently, she says Progressive Fine Art sent a colleague to the gallery to check on the status of the artwork and he managed to retrieve four pieces, but were told the rest weren’t on site.
When the company inquired about the missing pieces, Mitchell says they were told that it was a successful weekend and most of the artwork had been sold.
According to Mitchell, they were promised that the accountant was working on payment, but she claims it has now been six months and the cheques they’ve been waiting on are nowhere to be found.
When KelownaNow presented these accusations to Cyndy, there was no response.
“It seems that these individuals are experts in deception and procrastination, resorting to any means necessary to buy themselves more time,” Mitchell said.
She adds that two of Progressive Fine Art’s gallery artists have also “fallen victim” to Tutt Street Art Gallery, and Havers says that he has heard the pain from many artists first hand.
He tells KelownaNow that he’s talked to many affected artists over the phone who are crying on the other end, some of them so “distraught” and “demoralized” that they’ve given up their craft.
A potential criminal case and a “saddened” mayor
While Graff is the only artist to have filed a civil claim against Tutt Street Art Gallery at this point, several of the affected artists have gone to the police.
"It was definitely reported, I can say that,” a spokesperson for the Kelowna RCMP told KelownaNow. “But there are no active investigations right now."
The spokesperson said the RCMP can’t say too much on the case, because police comments now could affect a criminal investigation down the line if it moulds into that.
But Graff going to the media with his plight has seemingly lit a fire under other affected artists to try once again to tell their story to the RCMP.
In a follow-up call with the RCMP, the spokesperson confirmed to KelownaNow that all information has been forwarded to investigators who will look into activating the case again.
From one authority to another, Kelowna mayor Tom Dyas is part of a group, in a private capacity, that owns Tutt Street Square, which is where the gallery in question resides.
Dyas says the gallery is “a numbered company” and a “tenant,” and they’ve always paid their rent “within a timeframe that was acceptable.”
The mayor notes that he was only just informed about the accusations against Tutt Street Art Gallery and how it has affected the artist community.
“I don’t know the details of it,” he told KelownaNow. “Obviously, if everything is truthful, depending on what comes out, I’m very saddened that it’s affected that community to that extent.”
The effect on other local galleries
All too familiar with how small and connected the art industry is, Tracy Campbell doesn’t want the allegations against Tutt Street Art Gallery to affect how people see other Kelowna galleries.
Tracy Campbell is part of the team at nearby Gallery 421 – her husband CJ is the owner and an artist himself – and they are the ones who now represent Graff in Kelowna.
“The industry is small, artists talk, and we've understood that some of their experiences have been very upsetting,” Campbell told KelownaNow.
“We are made aware of the litigation and the court cases that are pending from other artists and another print company. It's unfortunate that that has had to happen.”
She speaks glowingly of other Pandosy-area galleries like SOPA Fine Arts and Hambleton Galleries, saying they’re not competitors but rather family in the industry.
“We support each other, we go to each other’s shows and we will send clients over to these other galleries if we are looking for a good match for a client that we know we don’t have the type of art they’re looking for,” Campbell explained.
With regards to the allegations floating around, Campbell says one rotten apple shouldn’t spoil the bunch and artists should not be fearful of other galleries as a result.
She says at Gallery 421, their sole priority is to support artists first, the gallery second and their own personal needs last.
"We have 36 dependents and they are like our family,” she added. “We need to see they are being represented properly and looked after."
Despite the news coming from down the street, Campbell wants the public to know that what’s happening in the greater Kelowna art community is very exciting.
She says the Imagine Pandosy Art Festival and Gallery Stroll on Sunday, July 21, will be a testament to the “wonderful, supportive art community” that Kelowna has.
And she urges people to come down and support the fun, family-friendly event where artists “can truly be represented and shown in their beautiful light with their gorgeous works.”
“The KLO-Pandosy Neighbourhood Association has done a wonderful job over the last four years to bring this together for our village and community,” she explained. “One issue should not take away from this awesome festival that has given so much back to the community.”
To learn more about the fourth annual Imagine Pandosy Art Festival and Gallery Stroll, click this link.
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