(Danny Fox – Self Portrait hanging above two Adrian Pearsall lounge chairs) Art is a great way to add your personality to your home. Knowing where to begin can seem daunting but once you discover what you are looking for collecting art can be great fun. The art you choose should reflect your personal style, so how do you work out just what your style is? Galleries are a good place to start as gallery owners have years of experience and can help you find the perfect piece of art. Whilst on holiday in St Ives, Cornwall over twenty years ago, I finally found my favourite style of art, Cubism! Since then I have sourced a number of pieces in the Cubist style for my home without too much thought to where they might fit in. Simply because that style speaks to me. St Ives was seminal to Ben Nicholson’s art and was his home for nineteen years, during which he and his wife Dame Barbara Hepworth became key figures in the St Ives society of artists. We are lucky enough to have a Hepworth sculpture in Norwich (sea form bronze 1964) which is located just outside The Playhouse and most notably to the side of Norwich University of the Arts. Art in the home is all about expression, release your inner passion and buy art you love and not just because it may go with your design scheme. You can always tie in an element of your room scheme to compliment your piece of art at a later date.
My first example of ‘heart over head’ is a Terry O’Neil print of Actress Faye Dunaway (pictured above) shot in 1976, the day after she won an Oscar for the film Network. The print was bought from St Giles Gallery as a ‘must have’ piece by my client, with little to no concern of whether it would work in his room scheme at the time. Shortly after the purchase a William Morris curtain fabric was chosen to compliment the O’Neil print within the room. Another example of an interior tailored around a piece of art includes a limited edition Ronnie Wood print of Keith Richards. My client chose to centre her scheme on the deep blues within the print. Having already sourced a very rare Ernest Race Heron chair in need of much love, it was just a case of choosing the right fabrics to reupholster the chair, to compliment the electric tones in the print. You may be surprised at what you can find along the way, a Danny Fox painting bought from a modest cafe gallery ten years ago for £200.00 is now worth £5000.00 amongst collectors. Proving you don’t need a Saatchi sized bank balance to start collecting art. This article originally appeared in November’s edition of The Norwich Resident.
