Using Fine Art to Inspire Interior Spaces
By Julia Blanchard
One of our loyal Interior Collab members quips on how the great art masters can be looked to for cues on color and scale when designing interiors.
Design by Blanchard Design, Photo by Sean Litchfield
I always considered myself artistic and crafty. I thought that anything I put time and energy into in the art realm, I would be successful at. This was until I took a “painting” class in college. It was only then that I realized how clueless I was. Besides having no patience, the rules of color and scale just did not come to me organically. A few dismal paintings later and a mediocre grade, and I was done with painting.
It was later when I was an intern at an architectural firm, a senior designer handed me a postcard and told me to shop for fabrics according to the colors in the painting on the postcard. It made sense. If painters were gifted at using the right colors and ratio, why work hard and try and master the same color ratio in a room- when I could merely copy it?
This doesn’t mean you’re a “cop out” or less creative. It just allows you to spend more time focusing on the individual pieces of the room and textures versus worrying about whether the colors work together.
See below examples of famous works of art and coordinating mood boards that could translate to a room, merely by using the art as a color guide.
Claude Monet – Nympheas
Francis Bacon – Painting 1946
David Hockney- A bigger Splash
John Singer Sargent Madame X
So next time you’re on a vacation and fall in love with a painting, go to the gift shop- and grab a postcard. Who knows, it could be the color palette for your next renovation.
Julia grew up in a French household in Cambridge (US) and is a graduate of the School of Visual Arts (2009). She has worked on a large number of residential projects in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Upstate New York.
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