Why I am an unashamed maximalist and how to start thinking about the use of colour in your home.
By guest writer, Charles Hart - Art Dealer and Director of Skymeadow Gallery. www.skymeadowgallery.com | @skymeadowgallery
When it comes to interior spaces I am an unashamed maximalist. Though counterintuitive a room dressed with furniture feels larger than an empty room. Similarly, a messy desk often indicates a well-ordered mind. The way we organise interior spaces is deeply psychological.
Empty rooms were trendy in my twenties but always left me cold. Empty spaces are inherently uncomfortable. I wonder if those who promote them are really trying to resolve their own internal contortions or, like classical emperors, use vast open spaces to intimidate rivals!
Just as a room dressed with furniture will feel larger than an empty room, there is nothing so dull as an empty expanse of wall.
Going to Robin Birley’s Annabel’s in my twenties taught me the value of block-hanging paintings of multiple different shapes and sizes so they create a coherent and elegant whole. This is a very satisfying exercise but requires some skill. I have seen it done well but also very badly.
I have visited houses where every wall is hung in just such a way. These houses generally belong to obsessive collectors and they resemble the gardens of obsessive plantsmen. The entire interior space becomes a slightly crazed collection of ‘curios’.
I would reserve plastering a wall with paintings for areas I want to be maximally comfortable, perhaps maximally private or to break long hallways and boring through spaces, especially ones where people might actually spend time waiting.
Lucy Harwood, ‘Looking towards St Mary’s Church, Kersey’, framed dimensions: 51 x 61 cm. Make An Enquiry.
Because I am a picture dealer, paintings are constantly coming in and going out of my house. This means I am constantly rehanging. I enjoy nothing so much as a morning spent fiddling around rehanging paintings and I often worry people don’t move things around enough.
An interior, just like a garden, is fun precisely because it can endure a thousand little improvements. Like those awful interiors in historic houses, held in aspic their original inhabitants long gone, those who consider an interior ‘finished’ are missing the point. Neither do you need permission each time you wish to make an adjustment to your home.
Another thing to consider when you hang paintings is height. In my twenties I hung everything too high. I have observed this habit in others starting out too. As a picture dealer, I don’t wish to do myself a disservice but think beyond pictures when dressing a wall. Mirrors surrounded by pictures can have an effect all of their own, and wall sconces, especially good early pretty ones, and clocks can all be very pleasing for a maximalist like me.
If you think of a painter like Mary Fedden, she had a unique vision for and ability to use colour in a way that balanced. This skill was a lifetime in the making. Anyone who thinks it is easy either hasn’t tried or doesn’t know what they are looking at!
This thorny matter of colour is where people can sometimes come unstuck in their homes. One hack that most people know intuitively is to limit their palette. Regrettably, some interior designers use this method to sell a ‘look’ across the entirety of a house, but it always strikes me as a cheap, boring and ill thought-through solution.
Terence Clarke, ‘Window at Guadamar’, framed dimensions: 69.5 x 69.5 cm. Make An Equiry.
The skill, rather, is to use colour and to use it well. This is one of the inviolable skills any truly great designer will have. It is hard to describe but obvious when present. You can start the process with a colour wheel and swabs if you wish but there is simply no substitute for trying things out again and again until some balance drops like honey from the air.
My own learnings on the use of colour have come principally from a lifetime of gardening and looking at paintings. A midcentury artist I particularly admire for her bold use of colour is Lucy Harwood (see first painting above). She suffered a botched operation on her right arm as a teenager which put paid to her desire to become a pianist. She painted for the rest of her life with her left arm only. Like her mentor, Sir Cedric Morris, she had a particular skill for mixing purples, a colour that is hard to mix well. Alternately, if you want a contemporary colourist of immense skill, we love the work of Terence Clarke (pictured above).
Charles and his wife, Sybilla, reside in the picturesque Stour Valley, situated on the border between Essex and Suffolk—an area famously depicted by many artists. In addition to their work as art dealers, both Charles and Sybilla contribute articles to various newspapers and magazines.