Invite an Artist into your home! It may change your life!

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to invite an artist into your home?

I grew up from a very young age in a large old Victorian house of four floors, mostly undecorated since the war, and with holes in the plasterwork, which we covered over with posters of art exhibitions and the occasional map from National Geographic. My parents were artistic, father was an architect and mother was head of art at a large secondary school.

To make use of the unused ground floor rooms, we had a professional artist, Peter Midgley, a prix de Rome finalist, Royal Academy Exhibitor and tutor at Ravensbourne College of Art & Design, set up his studio in the front North facing room and my parents established a pottery in the other rooms, where regular classes were held with a professional pottery teacher at the helm. Our upstairs studio, the largest room in the house, was used for drawing and painting classes and on saturday mornings was filled with all the local children for an hour or two, while their parents went shopping.

So Yes, I know all about having artists in my home! But I didn’t really mean in the literal sense! I was thinking more in terms of choosing an artwork to hang in your home.  Beyond knowing the name of the artist, what else do you know about them? Because to get the most enjoyment from a painting, it helps to know or understand the artist. If you are lucky, you may meet them in the gallery, and exchange a few words or even get their ideas behind your chosen work, but normally, the name is all you see, on the signature or on the label. So what are they like? What makes them tick? What could it be about their life experiences and background, that is displaying itself subconsciously in your chosen artwork?

Artworks by their very nature, are incredibly individual. They don’t have to perform a function like a machine or piece of furniture, neither do they have to conform to any rules of design. They are as varied and as unique as their creators, with all their complexities and since each artist has his own individual and unique story to tell, the variety is almost limitless.

Maybe, as limitless as the improvised music of this Jazz Band.

So when choosing an artwork, if you can’t meet the artist, try to find out about them through a website or blog such as this, or from an Art Gallery which may have represented them, or perhaps from a Facebook Fan Page. If you are happy to bring one of their creations into your home and your family life, it could be so much more rewarding to get to know them, like a friend or a regular visitor. – Click on the photo to visit my gallery!

It might even change your life!