How to Choose Original Art for a Collected Home

I don't think the best rooms look like they were finished all at once.

I love that my home feels like it has been gathered over time. I have rocks from our trip to Oregon, a painting we bought after an amazing day seeing the buffalo in Yellowstone, and tramp art boxes collected at an antique store nearby. Something old next to something new. A quilt inherited from my great-grandma beside something my son found in the woods when he was four. So many books that we have read over the years, and coffee table books that remind me of places we have been. Things my five children made. And SO MUCH art that means something to us.

The best homes tell you something about the people who live there, and I think original art is one of the most beautiful ways to do that.

Start with what you love, not what matches

Hot take: I don't think a painting needs to match your sofa. And sometimes it matches so perfectly it makes your heart sing. My house is incredibly eclectic, and I always tell my daughter, as long as you love it, it will fit in your house.

Of course color matters. Scale matters. The way everything lives together matters. But I think it's just as important to choose a painting because you feel something when you look at it as it is to choose one because it contains exactly the right shade of blue. Furniture gets replaced. Walls get repainted. Rooms change. I truly believe a painting you really love can move through all of those versions of your home with you.

Let different things live together

This is such a personal opinion, but some of my favorite interiors pair contemporary paintings with old furniture, antiques, worn wood, patterned textiles, natural things found outside, and objects that have clearly lived another life.

That contrast is so beautiful to me. A modern oil painting can feel completely different hanging above an antique chest than it does in a very minimal room—and I love both. You don't have to choose between traditional and contemporary or old and new. A collected home makes room for all of it.

Pay attention to scale

This is probably the practical thing I think about most when helping someone choose a painting.

Art that is too small can sometimes feel like it's floating on the wall. If you're choosing one painting to anchor a large wall, over a sofa, console, or fireplace, don't be afraid of something substantial. A larger painting can actually make a room feel calmer because it gives the eye somewhere to land.

But small paintings have their own kind of magic.

I love them tucked into bookshelves, hanging beside a doorway, layered into a gallery wall, or placed on one of those little walls you weren't quite sure what to do with. I often will hang 4 paintings one above another on a narrow wall. Sometimes a grouping like this is just what you need to make a corner of your home more interesting.

Give yourself permission to buy slowly

And don't try so hard to  fill every wall. I'd rather live with an empty space for years than buy something just because the wall needs something there. The homes I love most weren't created in a weekend. They evolved. I am saving space for when Im 80.  And original art fits beautifully into that way of making a home because every painting becomes another layer of the story. You find one piece. Then another years later. Maybe you inherit something. Maybe you bring something home from a trip. Over time, those individual things begin to belong to one another simply because they belong to you.

Choose the painting you keep coming back to

This might be the simplest advice I have. If you're looking at original paintings and there is one you keep returning to, pay attention to that. You don't necessarily need to know why. Sometimes a painting reminds you of something. Sometimes the colors make you happy. Sometimes it feels peaceful or strange or familiar. And sometimes you simply love looking at it.

I think that's enough.

I'm interested in making paintings that become part of a home. The kind that move from room to room and house to house. The kind your children remember hanging on the wall. The kind that eventually becomes wrapped up in the story of the people who lived with it. To me, that's what makes a home feel collected. Not that everything goes together. That everything has a story for being there.