Dr. Harper Higgins is an Adjunct Professor of Art History at the Cambridge Institute of Fine Arts. To make ends meet, she also teaches an adult painting class at the Arts Collective. She once aspired to the life of a painter herself, that is until her last show a year ago resulted in a scathing review by an esteemed art critic named Rick, who also happened to be her boyfriend at the time, that review which led to them breaking up and she putting down her paint brush for good. Although she never aspired to the life of an academic, she, as appointed curator, has managed to secure a famous artist for the Institute's upcoming Art Exhibition, it being a success which she hopes will lead to a promotion to a full time position. When that artist backs out, Harper scrambles to find a replacement. Who she hopes will be approved is the man she literally stumbled onto who became her dog walker, Tom Becker, his artwork which she truly admires. Untrained Tom only began to paint as therapy when he was in the VA Hospital (dog walking which was also therapy), he now not ever believing he could stop painting, but it being something he only does for himself. Regardless, partly in his attraction to Harper but mainly to pay the repair bills on his crumbling houseboat, he agrees to put his artwork forward for the Exhibition. In the process, Harper ends up telling two lies to her boss, Dr. Martin, to convince him to display Tom's work at the Exhibition, the bigger of the two lies, stemming from an anecdote told to her by Tom, which ends up being the focus of Tom showing at the Exhibition: that he is the great-great-grandson of Vincent van Gogh (the truth being that his great-great-grandmother grew up in the same town in Holland as Van Gogh and may have had a relationship with him). As it gets closer and closer to the Exhibition, Harper and Tom begin to fall for each other, and what is shown of Tom's artwork in preparation does catch the eye of some influential people in the art world. But the lie being discovered would not only ruin Harper's academic career and possibly ruin the reputation of the Institute, but could threaten her and Tom's relationship in the pressure of maintaining the lie, perhaps unless Tom's work truly can stand on its own merit.
