Femka Van Buuren is blonde, striking, statuesque. The line "She was built like the hull of a racing yacht, and you missed none of it" – Hemingway´s description of Brett Ashley in The Sun Also Rises – immediately springs to mind when I meet the art dealer at the bar of The Spoke Club in downtown Toronto. We move to a table and begin to speak in earnest, and it soon becomes clear that her bombshell facade is the least compelling thing about her – and that, as in an interesting photograph, the hypnotic surface leads to a deeper emotional and narrative resonance.

View a gallery of Femka´s artists

Van Buuren has a direct gaze that can prove disconcerting, yet despite her forthright manner there is an almost cherubic softness to her face as she speaks about her past and the road that led her to the glamorous and lucrative career that she now enjoys. It began with an extensive education in art and art history and studio classes, including painting, sculpture, installation art and plastics. Then a production business that held music events with acts like The Chemical Brothers and world class DJs Sasha, John Digweed, Tiësto, and Paul Oakenfold. Van Buuren and her partner made a lot of money and lost a lot of money, and after three years she decided to move to Tokyo and explore her fascination with Eastern culture. Once there, she found herself lonely and isolated, but it led to personal and artistic growth. Van Buuren recalls, "I was inspired to become a photographer. I learned a lot about my strengths during this time ... whenever I got lonely, I’d go out and take photographs of the world."

Back in The Spoke Club, there is a small commotion as the room fills with impossibly young, stork-like models – apparently a casting is in progress. Van Buuren’s eyes sparkle. She is delighted by the sudden infusion of flesh and blood aesthetics into the otherwise static tapestry of the room. She returns to her story, though her cobalt eyes shift and scan....

After a year of swimming as a mermaid in a fish tank at a house club, among several other interesting jobs in Tokyo, Van Buuren moved back to Canada – first to Montreal, and then to Toronto. Then another round of higher education. Installation Art. Welding. Interior Design. Fine Arts. She says, "Throughout this time, I had collected work from several photographers and purchased a piece of David Drebin’s artwork before he was known as a prolific photographer ... we became great friends and he inspired me to become an art dealer."

Van Buuren now represents Drebin, who recently enjoyed what was for him a world-record sale of a 48-inch by 60-inch photograph, Movie Star, for US$16,250.

Van Buuren and I move to a lower level of the club, and she critiques a space where I’m considering throwing a cocktail party. I’m grateful for her insights but my energy is beginning to flag. I have skipped lunch, consumed two cans of Guinness and am urgently in need of a nap. Van Buuren, though, seems to be humming with energy and exuberance, like a fusion reactor hitting an energy gain. She says, “I think it’s smart to develop a collection of photographs that tell a story in each piece or have presence, or even have some sort of interesting element that makes the viewer question or think, or in some way is related to a memory that your hidden demon likes to indulge in or a feeling that makes the piece an emotional extension of who you are."

Femka Van Buuren. It’s a name that I would like to give to a femme fatale art dealer in a satirical literary novel that I will one day write. It is a perfectly fictitious name, I tell her. “Yours too," she says.

My Femka would split her time between New York and Toronto, while regularly hitting L.A. and Paris. Her favourite photographer would be Guy Bourdin, while Cindy Sherman would inspire her to take photographs of herself in the darkest moments of emotion. She would be constantly out and about at art fairs, dinners and events. She would go diving in The Maldives but keep working, meeting collectors from Europe and showing them photographs on her Pico by Optoma, the smallest projector in the world. Her clients’ work – ranging from narrative, architectural, landscapes, black and white, and digital art works – would go from anywhere between $1,500 and $20,000, and she would sell to high-profile professionals, NHL stars, celebrities, socialites, interior designers, married couples and men living in sumptuous bachelor pads.

In other words, my Femka would be a carbon copy of the original, right down to the gleaming Manolo Blahniks.

“Femka," I ask. “Would you rather take a beautiful photograph or be the subject of a beautiful photograph?"

Van Buuren’s blue eyes are preternaturally bright within the frame of her symmetrical features.

“I think I’d rather take a photograph when I can get inside the mind of the person who I am capturing that single second where they are in their own heads, or when I can create a scene in my own head that I have already seen when I walk outside and tune into a variety of channels," she replies.

“Amen," I say. And then it’s time to go home.

More about private art dealer Femka Van Buuren:
Official website: www.femka.com
Twitter: www.twitter.com/femka
Blog: www.femka.wordpress.com

William Morassutti is the co-founder and Editor-in-Chief of TORO. Prior to joining TORO, he worked in Canadian broadcasting as a writer, producer, director, reporter and host.