Interior Design: Let Art be your inspiration

Interior Design: Make art the heart of your scheme. It’s great when art takes center stage in interior design projects, though often it’s considered in the final stages of a project and seen more as a dressing, adding the final touches to a space and accommodated only if there are funds remaining in the budget. In these cases the art needs to be found once the rest of the scheme is already in place.. Which can be tricky. Of course I prefer the reverse to happen, putting art at the heart of the scheme. A particular piece of art can almost serve as the mood board for an interiors project (or it’s inspiration) providing pointers for colour, texture, shape and so on for the rest of the scheme to emerge from and of course unlike other interior expenses – window dressing, flooring, soft furnishings and so on the artwork may well increase in value as the years pass, so can be seen as an asset rather than an expense.

It’s great to hear about examples of art being at the heart of projects. One of our artists – Birgitte Lykke Madsen (along with a creative colleague) recently won a competition to help design and identify themes for a Danish daycare center before
 the appropriate architect was identified, as she said: “Usually the art enters new buildings for decoration, but this time our theme and thoughts have been chosen and are now to be developed in good spirit with the architect.” And it was wonderful to see the Homes and Gardens’ interior feature this month, inspired by the work of post-impressionist painters and featuring work by New Blood Art artists Rebecca Fontaine-Wolf and Laura Menzies. Below is a selection of work, which I think would be rather wonderful as inspiration for interiors.