The history of four eleven gallery
The white house at 411 Commercial Street has long had art in its bones.
Built around the turn of the century, the house became more than just a home in the early 1960s, when Helen Daphnis-Avlon and her husband, the New York School abstractionist Nassos Daphnis, turned it into a guest house. It quickly became a quiet haven for artists, writers, and thinkers—a rambling place filled with the energy of creation and conversation, with Provincetown’s harbor light slipping through its many windows.
In 1978, Madelyn Carney came upon the house and fell in love with the view of the pier from the dining room table. She purchased it not as an investment, but as a place to live, to gather, and to invite artists into something more like a shared life than a residency. Over the next thirty years, the house continued to hum with creative energy. It became a home to painters and playwrights, musicians and misfits—anyone moved by Provincetown’s singular blend of wild nature and bohemian soul.
Madelyn, an artist and collector herself, held space for that life to unfold. She brought to the house a quiet generosity, a belief that art should be lived with, not just looked at. Her daughter, Liz Carney, grew up surrounded by canvases, brushes, and the conversations of artists at work. And in 2010, Liz reimagined the front of the house—once a parlor, a sitting room, a gathering space—as a studio gallery.
That space became Four Eleven Gallery.
Rooted in the Provincetown tradition of painting and process, the gallery continues to show works by artists who explore visual form, emotional resonance, and cultural dialogue. From abstract and representational paintings to more critically reflective work, Four Eleven offers a thoughtful, evolving program centered on artists living and working on Cape Cod.
More than just a gallery, it is the continuation of a legacy—one that began with Madelyn’s view from the dining room table, and lives on through the artists who now fill its walls.
Remembering my mother, Madelyn carney
My mother, Madelyn Carney, was born in Boston and raised just outside the city where streets were lined with trees and books filled every shelf. She grew up with a deep love of language and went on to study English, eventually becoming a teacher. She had the kind of mind that soaked up stories and the kind of heart that wanted to make room for more of them.
She first came to Provincetown in the early ’70s, and like so many before her, she was enchanted. Not just by the light or the sea, but by the creative soul of this place. She loved the way artists and writers lived side by side here, the way no one flinched at a little eccentricity, the way conversations stretched long into the night.
In 1978, she bought the house at 411 Commercial Street. She always said it was because of the view from the dining room table where you could look out at the pier and watch the tides roll in. But it was also because she saw possibility in the house. She filled it with painters, playwrights, and seekers. For three decades, it was a gathering place full of stories, laughter, and the quiet focus of people making work.
She never called it a gallery. That came later, when I opened Four Eleven in the front of the house. But in truth, she created the spirit that made a gallery possible. She believed deeply in creative people not in the polished or perfect, but in the real work of it all. She made space for that.
She made space for me.
I miss you every day, Mom.
Love, Liz