Magical mixing of art, fine dining at Blue Coyote Supper Club of Fort Myers, Sanibel

Through the gates of Caloosa Yacht and Racquet Club, in a nondescript building that fronts the water, there is a bright spot of art and dining culture called the Blue Coyote Supper Club. The club pulls its name from the works of artist Markus Pierson, whose paintings fill its walls. Pierson and Blue Coyote owner Mitch Schwenke are long-time friends, and listening to the story of their collaboration is like observing a “mutual admiration society,” as the two call their working friendship.

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“If you ask me how I got into the art business, it’s that I’m a restaurateur first. I’ve been in the art business since 1997, because I’m a gallerist in my restaurants,” Schwenke says. “Most gallerists are failed artists, just like I am. We fall in love with a particular artist or series.”

Schwenke launched the Blue Coyote Supper Club in Fort Myers in 2002 and a second restaurant on Sanibel in 2013. Prior to that, he owned a series of coffee shops locally and in Tampa, including Blackhawk Coffee in Bell Tower. In all of his shops, Schwenke hung art for sale. 

When he decided to get out of the coffee business, Schwenke didn’t plan on starting his own restaurant. But he had served as the maitre d’ at the private University Club in Fort Myers before it closed, and he knew that demand existed for an upscale private dining club. The residents of Caloosa Yacht and Racquet Club convinced him to check out their club house, which was available, and when Schwenke stopped in and saw the way the restaurant’s picture windows opened onto the water, he knew it was a good spot. The Blue Coyote is open to anyone, not just residents of Caloosa Yacht and Racquet Club. A yearly membership costs $250.

Around the time Schwenke was working on plans for his private supper club, he discovered Pierson’s blue coyotes in an art catalog.

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“I fell in love with his art,” Schwenke says, “and I knew it would sell. I didn’t know how much or how quick, but I knew it would work. This kind of art, with its storytelling, is custom made for a nice restaurant.”

Schwenke secured the rights to use the “Blue Coyote” name from Pierson’s art publisher in Chicago, and he began collecting original paintings and prints of Pierson’s works. Three years after the Blue Coyote opened, in 2005, Schwenke met Pierson for the first time at an art show in New York.

“He had heard about us and how much art we were selling,” Schwenke says, “and we hit it off.”

After that Pierson came to Fort Myers to visit the supper club, and he painted a piece exclusively for the restaurant. The piece reads: Above all we enter with a humble heart, thankful for the bountiful journey that brought us here and the friends that share our destination.

“That still gives me goosebumps,” Schwenke says.

As for Pierson, his journey to become a master artist reads like a modern fairy tale.

“It was 1985 and a very bleak time in my life,” Pierson says. “I was an accountant, and I had Crohn’s disease about as bad as you can get it. It almost killed me. The surgeons said, ‘It didn’t get you this time, but it will next time. Take a look around this hospital room because that’s going to be the dominate view for the rest of your abbreviated life. If there’s something you want to pursue, better get to it chop chop.’”

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That’s when Pierson made a decision about how he wanted to spend the rest of his time.

“You can worry for all the wrong reasons,” he says, “so I vowed I wouldn’t worry any more. I decided I was going to be an artist, even though I’d never met anyone who had been successful at it, never even knew anyone who knew anyone who was an artist. I took a job as a billboard artist because you can paint all day and learn to mix colors.

"In my new-found circumstances, my girlfriend left me and my dog ran away. At night, when I was done painting billboards, I would go through the streets looking for him. It was a depth of sorrow that wasn’t healthy, looking for a dog in the streets of Michigan in the middle of winter. I told myself, maybe his life is totally cool now, maybe he’s living in a house with people who are way cooler than me, maybe he’s moved to New Mexico.

"So I painted him in New Mexico driving around in a vintage Jaguar. I’d come home and look at that painting and say, ‘There’s my boy, living the life.’ It was cathartic, and I knew I had stumbled onto something. Art didn’t have to be pastoral. It could have an effect on you.”

Thirty-three years later, Pierson’s art continues to have an effect on people. He keeps a box full of letters from fans who have been inspired by his art to set off on their own journeys of personal fulfillment. And he acknowledges the role of his art in saving his own life.

“I haven’t even had a stomach ache in 35 years,” he says. “You can credit it to a lot of things, but I credit it to the fact that I live my life without fear of the normal consequences a person might live with. This whole thing might end tomorrow, and I’d be like, ‘What a ride.’”

Many of Pierson’s pieces include thoughtful lines about his personal life philosophy, like this line from a painting titled “Viceroy”: “A life lived beautifully, if not with perfection; and love given in earnest, if not always to the right recipient. A heart that is full and beats with purpose, but in the eyes a faraway look, in the soul a persistent churning. Would that he could he would appoint himself viceroy of all the world’s dreamers, shake them from their apathetic slumber, and toss them down the road to their splendid, suspended, intended destinies.”

“It’s my favorite story,” Schwenke says of the narrative. He has the original “Viceroy” hanging in the Fort Myers restaurant, but it’s not for sale. Much of the artwork on the walls, though, is available for purchase, both as originals and as prints. 

“It’s a true collaboration between me and him,” Pierson says of his relationship with Schwenke. “It’s not just that he found an artist and put his work on the wall. We’re like brothers from other mothers. My father was a restaurateur, so I have full appreciation for how well this place is run and operated and how incredibly difficult it is to do that. I think he's absolutely brilliant at whatever he chooses to do. I feel very lucky.”

IF YOU GO
Blue Coyote Supper Club
Where: 9854 Caloosa Yacht and Racquet Drive, Fort Myers; or 1100 Par View Drive, Sanibel

About: The Blue Coyote in Fort Myers  is open to anyone, not just residents of Caloosa Yacht and Racquet Club, for a yearly membership of $250. The one on Sanibel is open to the public.
More: bluecoyotesupperclub.com