How to properly season your interior design with artwork
Paintings, prints and sculptures should have a prominent place in your decorating scheme. When you decorate a room, you are combining a collection of objects to create a cohesive design that is pleasing to the eye, makes you feel good, and is conducive to the purpose of the room.
Artwork is to interior design what spices and seasoning is to cooking; it makes the flavors come alive, making the food sweeter, savorier, exciting to the palate.
When you add artwork to your design, you are spicing it up, giving it flavor, and providing connectivity to your spaces. Just as you would marry your dinner courses with seasonings, so to you marry your elements with artwork.
Consider the commonly seen family photo grouping hung in a family room. All those faces staring out at you as you watch television, play games, or visit can be unnerving. It's like too much salt on the fish.
Better to hang the relatives along the hallway, in groups of three or four. A light seasoning of ancestry brings out the flavor of the photographs, the frames they are in, and the hallway itself.
The hallway is now connected to the rest of the house; the photographs hung as artwork have given the hallway validity. Instead of being a sip of water between bites, it is a tasty appetizer.
Think about the spaces you and your family and friends spend time in relaxing and enjoying each other's company. Are those rooms warm and laid back, like comfort food? Or are they lively and spicey, like enchiladas? If those spaces are as non-descript as rice cakes, artwork may be just the thing to bring them to life.
If you want comfort food, look for traditional prints and paintings. Think landscapes and domestic scenes. Think antique maps and still lifes. These are warm, earthy seasonings; they are the rosemary and sage in turkey stuffing.
Looking for spice? Look for more modern pieces, graphic posters, funky sculptures, either free standing or for the wall. These will heat up the room, like a generous sprinkle of red pepper flakes.
While you want to use color to create cohesion, choosing artwork for color alone can be problematic. Subject matter is an important part of the impact artwork has on a room. If you choose a painting for the dining room because it has the same colors as your window treatment, but the subject of the work is a matador spearing a bull, your dinner guests may well lose their appetite.
You need to be certain your seasonings are appropriate to the dish. Just as you would pair rosemary and chicken, paprika and fish, and sage with turkey, you need to pair the subject of the artwork with the purpose of the room.
As with all your design elements, you need to pay close attention to lines, color, texture, and scale. But artwork, like seasoning, should be used to enhance, not overpower.
Whether you select one or two pieces for a room, or create a whole gallery on one wall, the pieces you choose should compliment the overall design. Your artwork should be proportionate and appropriate. Just remember, the right seasonings can turn the most ordinary of meals into fine cuisine, and artwork can turn ordinary rooms into fine design.
