Elizabeth Peyton: Pretty as a Picture in Orient

SELLER: Elizabeth Peyton and Tony Just
LOCATION: Village Lane, Orient, NY
PRICE: $900,000
SIZE: 1,500 square feet (approx.), 2 bedrooms, 1 bathroom
DESCRIPTION: ...Warm and inviting living room with fireplace; formal dining room for entertaining; custom designed and built kitchen with teak counter tops and mahogany cabinets. Screened enclosed front port plus open side porch. Detached garage/studio; in ground heated lap pool. Mature gardens and lush plantings.

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: A New York based art world birdie buddy recently whispered in Your Mama's big ear that mid-career art star Elizabeth Peyton and her long time arty-farty boy beau Tony Just are selling their weekend getaway at the far eastern end of the North Fork of Long Island. Located in the quirky and quaint village of Orient, the couple have listed their 2 bedroom and 1 bathroom hideaway on Village Lane with an asking price of $900,000.

Your Mama can forgive the children for not knowing a thing about the North Fork since its glitzier and more celebrity obsessed sister fork, the Hamptons, gets most of the press and attention...a situation that most North Forkers seem to like just fine. A quick scan of an online map shows that Long Island splits at a town called Riverhead. To the south is the bizzy and hoity toity Hamptons and to the north stretches the more bucolic and somewhat less discovered North Fork, a region becoming known for its vineyards and varietals.

Just because her face isn't splashed across the pages of all the gossip glossies and just because some (and perhaps even most) of the children will not recognize her name does not mean that Miss Peyton isn't famous. She's art world famous, which in New York is not so different than being a television star in Hollywood. Miss Peyton rose to the tippy top of the art heap in the mid 1990s painting small jewel like portraits which mirrored snap shots of friends and famous people's pictures she ripped out of magazines. Nowadays, of course, she has no need to rip the pictures from the pages of magazines since she fraternizes with all manner of rich, well known and arty types.

Anyoo, property records show the art world couple purchased their Craftsman cottage in September of 2001 for $325,000. Listing information indicates the modest house measures in at (approx.) 1,500 square feet. Clearly the painterly pair put a fair amount of work into the place including adding a dee-lishus looking lap pool and a custom designed kitchen with teak counter tops and mahogany cabinets...a pretty picture of which Your Mama is sorry the real estate agent didn't include with the listing because we imagine it to be speck-tack-u-lar. Other rooms we'd like to see photos of include the living room with fireplace, the dining room, the detached garage/studio and the screened porch...because who does not L.O.V.E. a screened porch, partick in the era of West Nile Virus in mosquito infested Long Island?

We can imagine this Miss Peyton's property is the very picture of upscale simplicity that many people of means crave in a weekend getaway. However, it makes Your Mama constipated just to think of having to regularly marinate in the stink of weekend guests suffering from gastro-intestinal issues brought on by too much farm stand bought fresh fruit and local oysters served raw on the half shell. Adding a second bathroom might be costly, but worth every single cent and we encourage the new owners to call a contractor the moment they sign the closing papers.

Property records reveal that other big name types who own hideaway homes in Orient include prolific and monumental sculptor Richard Serra and art world architect Richard Gluckman, the man responsible for buildings such as the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh and the Museo Picasso Malaga in Spain.

Your Mama has no personal knowledge about why Miss Peyton and Mister Just would chose to sell their dee-voon little cottage, but we hear from several art world pals that it might have a little something to do with the female friend Miss Peyton has been spotted with around town lately. Uh oh! If there's any truth to the rumors and gossip sweeping the streets of the art gallery nabe of Chelsea, one has to wonder if the couple will also be selling the West Village townhouse that property records show they purchased in July of 2006 for the not very starving artist price of $3,800,000.