Space
It is undeniable that what we put on our walls elevates our spaces. Whether it’s family photos, a shadow box filled with memorabilia, prints, posters or our favorite original art. What we look at has a huge impact on our lives. When someone feels something in a room, it is directly related to what they see on a wall. You might like hanging out at a friends house or your parents house. Why? Because it’s cozy, inviting, comfortable, feels like home. This is because there is a calm place for your eyes to rest. There is an expectation that you know what you’re about to see. It doesn’t push you like an advertisement, is sterile like a hospital, or is a sensory overload experience like shopping in a crowded trinket-filled store. What we put on our walls matters to us, to our guests, and to the feeling we want to invoke in our homes. The personality of the artwork ignites the uniqueness of the space.
As a working artist, the question that I find most interesting is the relationship between the artwork and the room that it’s hung in. How important is the physical space that the artwork is in? For instance, let’s say you have a candid snapshot of a family frolicking in the ocean with their dog catching a frisbee in the foreground. Would it have the same impact hung on a wall in a gallery vs in someone’s living room vs in a coffee shop or would it have any impact at all hanging on a wall in a grocery store?
Here’s another example. What happens if you walked into a construction zone and found six contemporary oil paintings hung in the space? Would they seem out of place? Would they be a distraction? Would it almost seem comical? Yes to all of it. I would argue that the space has to work in tandem with the objects in it. Try hanging a larger than life painting on a narrow wall with low ceilings. Try hanging a tiny painting on an expansive wall with vaulted ceilings. There are logistics to consider. Try playing with opposites and collections and spacing. There are standards to hanging art but what happens if we break them? Hang something too high or too low or off center. In putting six contemporary oil paintings in the middle of a construction zone, am I trying to make a statement? I might be urging a guest to focus on the calm in the middle of chaos. Or to look for the beauty in any situation. Or I might be saying that out of the rubble grows inspiration. Time for a new beginning, perhaps. I might also be saying that there’s value in both creation and destruction and that one informs the other. The artwork that we choose and the spaces that we display it in both contribute to a meaningful presentation.
