“The friends we have made, not only collectors, but museum directors
and people. That’s been the most fun in this business.”
Beside him, among stacks of papers,
glows one of his lamps; the walls are heavy
with rifles, paintings and sculptures, and
the oriental rugs criss-crossing the floors
dazzle the eye.
Such is the sum of Knoke’s halfcentury
as one of Georgia’s premier art
dealers. For 30 of those years, his right
hand has been Debbie Charter, the gallery’s
director. Knoke says she runs the place;
Charter admits only to handling the
“computer work.”
But to ask either of them what they
cherish most as they prepare to shut down
the gallery over the next year, they won’t
point to anything on the walls.
“It’s the relationships,” Knoke says,
Charter nodding her agreement. “The
friends we have made, not only collectors,
but museum directors and people. That’s
been the most fun in this business.”
Knoke won’t hesitate to admit his life
— spent in the buying and selling of
beautiful objects — has been a charmed
one. It’s not, however, all chin-stroking
from the comfort of an armchair.
“Of course all our friends and
customers think we play all day long,” he
tells Cobb Life, “but we really work.”
That comes with the territory of how
the pair have built their gallery. Knoke Fine
Arts isn’t some knick-knack shop hawking
cheap landscapes to tourists, nor is it a
whitewashed and bare room where a single,
inscrutable canvas sells for a small fortune.
“What we sell primarily is ‘investment
art,’ that hopefully grows in value, normally,
and has a track record already of what it
sells for,” Knoke says.
In other words, the transactions are
only the beginning or end of a whole
process for each painting or sculpture.
There’s restoration, framing, photography
of the piece, research into the artist and
TOP RIGHT: Dave Knoke and
Debbie Charter pose with a
painting inside Knoke Fine
Arts, the Marietta gallery
which has specialized in 19th
and 20th-century American
paintings for nearly 50
years.
DECEMBER 2021 | COBB LIFE 11