Is the art on your walls nudging each other for space?
Photo: Lucell’s Sunburst in a Crystal Bowl styled by designer Shirlene Brooks at © RE:VIEW INTERIOR DESIGN
Ideas for styling small art prints and originals
Since starting my artist website, Lucell I have been haunting the home styling section in the local library for ideas on how to style small art. Or as I call it-portable art. Here you will find fun ideas gathered from some of my favorite books. Some ideas are for the wall, but there are many other places in a home or workplace to insert a small piece of art. Read on.
My favorite book: Styled: Secrets for Arranging Rooms, from Tabletops to Bookshelves by Emily Henderson
I love this book. I gifted it to a young couple to celebrate their first home. Some of the best advice Emily gives is to first “work with what you’ve got. Don’t go shopping just yet.” I would add shop for art next.
What are they thinking? A whole section is on portraits!! P127 I loved her advice to go for unfamiliar or quirky faces. I have a couple of those!! In Spiro’s book listed below she advises to find portraits that make you wonder what they are thinking. That would be a great party game idea. Tell everyone in 3 sentences what that person was thinking. Then vote on who had the best story.
Kitchen art: On page 205 Emily shows a wall of art near a kitchen seating area. She admonishes her readers, “Don’t pigeonhole your art to the living room or hallway. Smaller pieces of art can live anywhere, and guests will be much more patient while you’re cooking if they have an interesting view to keep them busy.” I would add that the art does not have to be kitchen themed. A still life is nice, but so is a portrait or landscape. Do you have a counter styled? Prop a photo there.
Color-Should you choose your art to match your home? My thoughts. Yes, you can choose your art to go with colors that already decorate your home, or you can choose art and then decorate with the colors in your art. However, chances are you don’t need to worry about it. There’s a good chance that you will be attracted to a certain piece of art because it has the colors in it that you love and already have in your home.
On the other hand, if you find yourself falling in love with the design or image of a piece of art with a whole new color palette or style, buy it! Contrasts and differences are a good thing. And if you really think it looks out of place when you get it home, buy a couple of pillow covers, a vase, or Knick-knacks in the same colors as your new art. Spread them around the room and enjoy this new look.
Bottom line buy art you love, that moves you, makes you laugh, makes you think of a happy memory or inspires a story. Don’t buy it for your sofa, buy it for yourself.
The most unusual ideas Beekman 1802 Style the attraction of opposites by Brent Ridge and Josh Kilmer-Purcell a country living book (The Beekman brand has changed to skin care products, using goat’s milk, but you may be able find this book in the library. I did)
String and clips for prints The Beekman 1802 book proved a great source. One of the most unique examples is on the inside leaf. The pictured wall is crisscrossed with rope. Prints are hung on the ropes in a gallery style using large binder clips to attach the prints to rope. The style is not for the weak of heart but fits this rustic wall.
Bookshelf In a photo on p43, the authors hang a vertical line of small framed photos down the edges of a built-in bookshelf. The frames fit within the confines of the bookshelf’s borders. It looks neater this way and does not hinder pulling a book off the shelf.
Staircase stringers Another unusual one is hanging same sized framed paintings on the stringers of an open staircase. They don’t have to be the same theme to look related if they are all the same size in the same or similar frames.
Wall collage still another idea is using old CD cases to form a grid pattern. In this example a large photo was cut into pieces that fit in the CD covers. The CDs are mounted up next to each other in the same pattern as the original. A modern approach would be to “disrupt” the image with another unrelated image or to leave a sizable gap between the some of the CDs, perhaps in a lightning bolt pattern. Just think of all the possibilities for this, you could use a favorite print. (Cutting up a print is not like damaging an original painting.) You could make a large collage by putting a variety of images in the CD covers.
I mined this book for ideas specific to styling small artwork, but there is so much more to enjoy and inspire. I recommend finding a copy of this book. I found it in the library.
Do you know the word tablescapes? This book uses it generously: Absolutely Beautiful Things: Decorating Inspiration for A Bright and Colourful Life, by Anna Spiro Spiro has a whole chapter on the art of arranging collectables into “tablescapes and vignettes and clusters” p 153. Hers is not a minimalist look.
Stacking She stacks things on top of things, including stacks of hats on stacks of books on side tables. I like her advice to fill spots with quirky objects and the unexpected.
Lampshades Art in the form of paintings and prints are not unusual items to style in bookcases and on walls hovering over a vignette. I have found that I can pick up any decorating book and find such examples. However, the unique example I found in her book was that of a lamp shade used as a bulletin board. There were postcards, photos and tags stuck on the shade with clips AND a scarf tied from inside and over the shade vertically with items tucked under the edge of the scarf.
Over the top decorating: Would you like to see the house? by Lorraine Kirke, photography by Patti Stoecker This designer/author is of the “more is more” enthusiast. The author of the preface called Lorraine’s home over-the-top and that her talents are unique and fearless. Seeing these photos I would agree. You can find photos from the book when you search Lorraine Kirke. I could not live in this home, but it would be fun to visit and just look at every treasure and sit on the lovely well-worn patterned textiles.
Color She is fearless about color. Don’t get me wrong, once you get past the sheer volume of color, pattern, and things, you notice that these rooms are curated. Each room has a predominant color carried over from the walls or a deep blue door, or a pink wall with orange accents, but the accessories are of all colors. This home reinforces my claim that art does not have to match the furniture, it can stand on its own finding a way to fit into the décor regardless.
Portraits I am fascinated by her liberal use of paintings of women in every room. They are hung and propped everywhere. They stare at you the visitor; they gaze at each other, and they face a few sprinkled in still lifes. P 52 I especially loved her confession that she had told her young children that one of the first paintings she ever purchased from a flea market was their great -great grandmother. Only after one of the teenage daughters started asking questions about this relative did she confess the origin of the painting.
My tip and last words: Reframe your idea that art is precious. It is common to see rooms styled with paintings leaned against a wall, a mirror or on a shelf. These treatments often show a “flea-market” painting find. They can be landscapes or portraits. I hope my paintings don’t become a flea-market find too soon, but art prints are low cost and can be put in a garage sale when you change up your décor; or they can be cut up into a collage or made into a card without guilt. Consider giving it a try.