Well, who read about the Art of The Con in the Inquirer? Luc Sonnet (a/k/a Richard Carl Grossman) has a Main Line Connection - he applied to be a First Friday artist in 2006....and people remember him being super strange....but it was the first First Friday...everyone thought he was legitimate..turns out he wasn't...read the whole article which is pages and pages in length...
Like body parts on a cubist canvas, the self-told tale of Luc Sonnet, "international fine artist," never quite fit together.
He claimed a childhood in the vineyards of Bordeaux, an internship at age 17 with Picasso...."An admired friend of many 20th-century artists, he influenced the concept and technique reflected in works by Pablo Picasso, Andy Warhol, Basquiat and Bofill," Sonnet wrote about himself in a 2005 letter of introduction to a New York art gallery.
Yet he spoke with a Long Island accent, rattled around the Philadelphia area in a rusted '86 Volvo, and hit up a series of girlfriends for money. And he never seemed to come up with any hand-painted, original art.
The pieces he did produce were digital - mostly abstracts printed from computers, signed, and marketed online as $200 limited editions.
Several artworks on his Web site bear dates from 1999 to 2001. They certainly weren't produced in France: For most of that period, he was sitting in federal prison.
Sonnet is indeed accomplished. Not as an imported fine artist, but as the all-American con artist Richard Carl Grossman.
From 1992 to 1995, Grossman, now 57, pulled off one of the grander scams in recent local history.
Posing as a visionary psychologist, he defrauded a dozen financial institutions that had lent him nearly $18 million for a chain of dial-in, all-hours, $1-per-minute counseling clinics that never opened.
Much of that cash went into construction of an enormous Main Line mansion, a 27,000-square-foot structure so over-the-top that its roof had to be cut flat halfway up to meet Tredyffrin Township's height restrictions.
Grossman pleaded guilty to fraud and money laundering, and spent 32 months in prison. He emerged late in 2001 and, while still under federal probation, began crafting his next persona.
As Luc Sonnet (pronounced so-NAY), he boasted of hanging out with Andy Warhol in 1980s New York. Of dating supermodel Kate Moss. Of having Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards' number programmed in his cell phone.....While many who encountered him found his claims improbable, even laughable, a good many others took the bait. A sample:
At least three newspapers published credulous profiles of "Sonnet" in the last year.
At least two art galleries - one in New Hope, one in Virginia - agreed to show his work, only to cancel once they caught on to him.
A Main Line mother of four let him move in with her, turned her living and dining rooms into a gallery for his prints, and registered his business - Sonnet Arts International - in her name. Alarmed, her family paid him $24,000 to leave, but not before the woman had racked up $85,000 in credit-card debt while supporting him....The owner of a Bucks County bed-and-breakfast spent thousands of dollars to convert an old workroom into a "Sonnet Gallery." But the tenant, who had declared himself the estate's "artist in residence," moved out without finishing even one painting.....Grossman left the Philadelphia area in June for Dumfries, Va., moving into the handsome brick home of his latest girlfriend. She is employed, incredibly, by the agency that had helped send him to prison: the FBI.
One summer afternoon, Grossman was surprised to find an Inquirer reporter at their door, there to question him as an investigation by the newspaper was unraveling much of his story. After a cigarette out back - "I have an anxiety disorder," he said - he admitted many of his lies....Growing up in Massapequa, Long Island, Grossman considered himself the "odd one" in his middle-class family of four, according to the reports. He roamed nomadically among the homes of friends; deeming public high school to be beneath him, he skipped much of his senior year.
After studying philosophy and computers at the State University of New York at Binghamton, he married and held a curious series of jobs - vacuum cleaner telemarketer, business consultant, real estate agent, unlicensed psychotherapist - before suffering a "breakdown" in the early 1980s, the reports say.
His adventures, and frustrations, as a patient inspired his reincarnation on the Main Line as the phony "Dr. Richard C. Grossman, Ph.D," founder and promoter of telepsychology clinics. Using falsified financial statements showing multi-millions in income, he gulled commercial lenders - General Electric Capital Corp. and AT&T Commercial Finance Corp., to name just two - into backing his couch-by-phone proposal....May 2004 Grossman got into a road-rage hit-and-run in Chester County.
While driving with a girlfriend in her aging Volvo, he cut off a brand-new R-type Jaguar on Route 252. The other driver laid on his horn at a stop light. Grossman threw the car into reverse, struck the Jag, and took off.
When police traced the Volvo, its 39-year-old owner, Charlene Welde, tried to take the fall for her companion by claiming she had been at the wheel.....The Rev. Matthew Welde is hardly as tight-lipped. His daughter Charlene, an aspiring artist with her own mental-health issues, moved with Grossman into a backwoods rental home in Birchrunville, Chester County, in March 2004....Instead, it was Charlene who left. In June 2004, telling not even her family, she emptied her bank account and flew to France, her father said. From there, she settled in Israel, where she is today....In summer 2004, Charlene Welde was gone. But her Volvo wasn't. He took it with him to Philadelphia, where he rented a room on South 18th Street. Soon, via Match.com, he was dating a research scientist who loved animals.
Grossman, however, did not love Liz Shea's cats, let alone her dogs, turtle and parrots. They made him wheeze, she said, and he leaned on her to get rid of them...By September 2005, Grossman had yet another new love: a Main Line woman who would fall hard for both him and his charade. She would promote him and pay his way for months - until her family went to extraordinary lengths to disentangle her.
Debra Robinson was 45 and soon to be divorced, with a child in college and three at home in Lower Merion.
None liked the artist their mother had met on a Jewish dating site, and her father and siblings soon concurred.
They smelled a phony when Grossman ran on about his Ph.D from Cornell and his international acclaim as "Luc Sonnet" - his "professional name," he said. They checked the Sonnet Web site, featuring the Picasso-protege shtick, and the odor intensified....Meanwhile, he began booking "live art to live music" performances. He sought out small venues where, using a laptop, digital pen and graphics tablet, he would create abstracts as musicians played and project his works-in-progress onto a large screen.
He and Robinson talked up the management at MilkBoy Coffee, an art and music venue in Ardmore, which agreed to hang his prints during October 2006. He did several live-art shows there, co-owner Jamie Lokoff said, but never delivered the big-name music talents - like British pop star James Blunt - whom he claimed to know very well.
"You're skeptical, but what if it is true?" Lokoff said. "That's how, in my opinion, he gets through with all of this."
Grossman got a big boost from a guileless press, inducing two newspapers to swallow the tale of "Luc Sonnet" virtually whole.
Contemporary fine artist Luc Sonnet was born in New York City in 1950. He was the son of artistic parents and began painting, drawing, and sculpting at an early age. Although he had an early history of creating portraits, landscapes, and other classic realism, it was his unique contemporary abstract work which received an even wider appeal. Sonnet’s work is inspired by spiritual reflection, and is uniquely called, “Abstract Spiritualism”. From a visionary world, he creates abstract work that he describes as “imagined images within an infinite universe”. He invents abstract forms to portray images of nature and creates undefined symbols and forms, combined with rich colors, to express “an endless landscape of beauty reflecting a universal soul”. His creations are more concerned with content than technique. Although Sonnet rejected formal art training which he felt would affect his natural technique and style, it was his study of Philosophy which greatly influenced his unconscious and subconscious artistic development evident in the abstraction found in his art. Sonnet seeks deeper meaning, appreciating the beauty and inspiration of what God offers us through the expression of art. He works in a wide spectrum of mediums to include drawings in pen and ink, pencil, charcoal, and pastels; paintings in oil and acrylic; and metal and bronze sculptures. His abstract work has been compared to Miro, Klee, Kandinsky, Picasso, Chagall and Hundertwasser. Angela Di Bello, Agora Gallery Director/Editor-in-Chief of ArtisSpectrum Magazine writes, “Luc’s influence on contemporary art is becoming the most widely felt of his time. Sonnet’s abstract, visionary paintings exhibit strength in concept and technique while focusing on abstract form and color to express spiritual ideology, mood and milieu. The work is inspired by the infinite universe and the soul; I particularly favor Revelations, Heart and Soul, Matinee, The Light, Divine Light, and The Miracle, although all of his paintings embrace light and spiritual well being. I feel that the work is in keeping with the style and quality of work that we have success representing and exhibiting at Agora Gallery.” It is his passion for original ideas which has allowed him to successfully diversify into other art mediums to include completely hand drawn digital fine art and photographic conversions to digital art. In keeping with this tradition and drawing upon his lifelong love of music, Sonnet pioneered a new mixed media art form called “Live Art to Live Music” using Wacom Technology, Apple Computer technology, and fine art software. In this medium Sonnet simultaneously translates a live music performance into a visual art form. This idea was conceived when he realized his brush stroke motions corresponded to the mood, melody, and rhythm of the music. Philadelphia musician Dirk Quinn described performing with Luc as “An inspiring new take on improvisation...to see your music actually come to life visually is one of the most amazing experiences I’ve had on stage. As a jazz musician, playing off of other band members and holding musical ‘conversations’ is something that I do on a daily basis, but with Luc I’ve noticed a more profound type of communication emerges. Watching as the ‘feel’ of my music is portrayed visually in real time; I can’t help but to react emotionally, on a gut level, to what I’m seeing on the screen. This of course then inspires transformation in the music that I’m playing and the exchange continues. It is truly a mixed media dialogue being held at the deepest levels.” As one “Live Art to Live Music” fan noted, the experience was “Mesmerizing. You detach from the world around you and become completely absorbed in watching the creation of the artist’s visual compliment to the music. Like a dance between partners that is enhanced by their individual movements playing off of each other, the result of the musicians and the artist working together is greater than the sum of the whole.” In addition to doing paintings, sculpture, and digital fine art, Sonnet is also an accomplished photographer. The unique diverse range of different images and overall aesthetics of Sonnet's abstract art has drawn many to collect his work. If you are interested in commissioned work, purchasing, or exhibiting Sonnet’s art, please contact us by email at
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