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.

This week, my family and I are spending a few days in the beautiful Northwoods of Wisconsin. Between quiet mornings, long walks, and time around the lake, I've found myself reflecting on three words that have quietly shaped both my life and my work.

The Larger Story.

Those three words hang in brass letters on the wall of my living room. They are also the title of a beloved book by an author I wish I could have known better.

Over the years, those words have become a lens through which I see the world.

                                 ]

I believe every small part of my life is held because it becomes part of my larger story. Nothing is wasted. Every experience matters.

I see this reflected in my family, too. Each of my children—and my husband and I—bring our own joys, wounds, and experiences together so that our smaller stories become the story of our family.

And above all, I believe every human life, precious and valuable, becomes part of the larger story God is telling throughout history.

Maybe that's why I keep painting fragmented forms, distinct lines, and broken pieces. They remind me that we are all made of many parts, and that every one of them belongs.

When I look at a canvas, I don't see disconnected shapes. I see lives. I see beauty woven through the fractures. I see small pieces coming together to create something whole.

              Without always realizing it, I've been painting what I believe to be true about the human experience.

Perhaps that's why I keep returning to these lines, these fragments, and these patterns. They remind me that our stories are rarely neat or uninterrupted. Yet somehow, every piece belongs.

I rarely set out trying to “say” something specific with fruit or branches. But over time I keep returning to the same forms for a reason.

Again and again, they find their way into my paintings. Lemons, oranges, pears, apples. Heavy branches. Leaves curling past the edges. Things gathered together. Things still growing. Things beginning to soften and change. Fruit just about to fall to the ground and leave emptiness in its place.

At first I think I was simply painting what held my attention. The shapes were beautiful to me. The movement of branches felt alive. Fruit carried color and weight and light in a way that pulled me in.

As a child, I adored finding fruit trees and bushes outside. I still do, no matter where I travel.

But somewhere along the way, I realized these forms were carrying meaning for me long before I knew how to name it.

Fruit feels connected to abundance. Not abundance in the loud or excessive sense, but in the quieter sense of fullness. Enoughness. A table prepared. A season arriving. The beauty of something being offered and received.

And yet fruit is also fragile.

It bruises. Ripens. Changes quickly. It cannot hold itself forever.

The longer I paint fruit, the less it feels like an object and the more it begins to feel connected to being human.

Fullness. Fragility. Ripening. Loss. Beauty that changes even as we try to hold onto it.

In the Bible, fruit is so often tied to our lives and formation. Growth. Abundance. Pruning. Nourishment. Season. The evidence of a life being shaped over time.

Maybe that is part of why these forms continue to resonate with me both visually and emotionally.

I think that tension is part of why I continue painting them. Fullness and fragility often exist side by side. So do beauty and loss. So do growth and limitation.

Branches hold that same tension for me.

I think of them almost like lines of history or relationship. They split and reach and continue outward. They carry evidence of weather and time. Some remain strong while others break or bend and keep growing anyway.

Lately I’ve realized I’m often painting branching forms the same way I think about family, memory, and becoming. The rings we carry. The things inherited. The ways our lives keep extending outward into one another.

Even my linework feels connected to this.

The outlines in my paintings are not really about containing forms perfectly. If anything, they often do the opposite. They press outward. They strain a little against the edges as I try to paint the feeling of life being both held and overflowing at the same time.

I’m trying to catch the reality that all the smaller parts of our story make up the larger story. The linework reminds me to hold this moment gently — it is beautiful, and this too shall pass.

Painting slows me down enough to notice what I might otherwise move past too quickly.

And maybe that is part of why artists return to recurring forms in general.

I don’t think repetition always means certainty. Sometimes it means we are still listening. Still trying to understand something. Still circling around a truth from different angles.

For me, fruit and branches have become a visual language I continue discovering as I paint.

They hold growth, tenderness, abundance, time, repair, memory, family, season, and change all at once.

And honestly, I suspect I’ll keep returning to them for a very long time.

Thanks for reading this far.

Follow my work at Amanda Scott Art Studio

When I’m painting, I’m not thinking about a blank wall. I’m thinking about where it might live—the kind of room it will enter and the way someone will experience it over time. Not just the first impression, but the hundredth time you take a look at it.

I create original oil paintings as a contemporary impressionist, but I don’t think about style first. I think about presence. What does a piece carry into a space? Does it feel grounding? Does it ask something of you? Does it hold your attention without demanding it? Those questions matter more to me than whether something matches.

A lot of people ask how to choose artwork for their home. I don’t think it starts with color palettes or sizing charts. I think it starts with noticing. What are you drawn to, even if you don’t fully understand why? The right painting usually isn’t the one that makes the most sense—it’s the one you keep coming back to.

In my own work, I’ve become more interested in restraint than impact. More rest in my own life has changed how I paint. I trust that something quiet can still hold a room. That shift has changed how my paintings live in interiors. I don’t want them to compete with a space. I want them to settle into it. (I think I’m learning to do that too.)

Art for interiors isn’t just decoration. It shapes how a room feels to live in. A painting can hold memory, mark a season, and become part of the rhythm of a home in a way that furniture never quite does. That’s the part I care about most.

When someone collects one of my paintings, I don’t think of it as a finished story. I think of it as something that will keep unfolding. The light will change it. The seasons will change it. The person living with it will change too. And I believe the painting will meet them there.

For me, that’s the goal—not just to make something beautiful, but to make something that lasts in a quieter way. Something that doesn’t rush past you. Something you can return to.

 24x24. Tree Rings. Private Collection. 

I’ve been thinking a lot about the inside of a tree 
those concentric rings that hold every year of its life.

Each ring tells what the tree moved through 
a dry spell, a winter that felt too long, a season of steady growth. You can even tell if it survived a fire. 
The tree doesn’t hide any of it.
It holds the record without shame.

There’s something in that image that feels truer to me than almost anything I’ve learned in the last few years.
We like to imagine that we shed our old selves 
that we outgrow them or move past them.
But I’m learning that we actually carry every version of who we’ve been.
Layer by layer.
Ring by ring.

Some rings show width and generosity
Others are narrow and tight with stress.

Some laid themselves when I wasn't even paying attention 
But they all belong.
They all tell the story of what the tree has survived, received, endured, and become.

I’ve started paying attention to my own “rings” —
the ages I still hold inside me.
The eight-year-old who tried so hard to be good.
The twenty-five-year-old who didn’t know how tired she was.
The mother learning to breathe again.
The forty-something woman  beginning to listen to her own life.

They’re all still here.
And instead of trying to hide them or correct them, I’m learning to sit with them, listen to them, and fold them back into myself with kindness. God has an incredible way of integrating us into ourselves.

Lately I’ve noticed how this idea keeps showing up in my art 
the way I layer color,
the way I hope to hold tension and beauty in the same frame,
the way a painting becomes a record of the questions I was carrying while I made it.
Sometimes I think each painting becomes its own kind of ring 
a thin line of growth you can’t always see from the outside,
but I feel it in my body when I stand in front of the canvas.

The older I get, the more I trust this slow, circular kind of becoming.
Not a straight line, not arrival, not achievement 
just a deepening.

Maybe that’s what wholeness really is 
not perfection, not this polished strength,
but the courage to carry all our rings without shame.
To say: this is my life, all of it, and it’s shaping me still.

And I'm brave enough to hold it. 

And maybe that’s enough.
Maybe it’s even beautiful.

The early years

When we first got married, I copied the interiors around me—older women I admired and whatever culture was saying (anyone remember mustard yellow and red…or shabby chic?). I probably spent too much time at Target buying trendy things. That’s okay. It was part of my story then.
Now,Im older andeverything that comes into our home has intention and meaning.

What changed

Getting older—and raising a family—helped me know and become more myself. Now I’m careful about the story our rooms tell. Beauty matters to me. Even when the kids were toddlers, I felt beauty was invitational and calming. When that beauty also carries our family’s memory, it’s a real win.

Our simple traditions

• A painting per trip. When we travel, we try to bring home one original work. If a painting isn’t possible, we buy a Christmas ornament instead. I love that our christmas tree tells our family story every year.

• Place on the walls. I love looking up and seeing Yellowstone bison, the Narrows in Utah, the coast of Spain, France, Hawaii, and Colorado. My kids see those pieces and remember. I do too.

• Photos everywhere. I’m voracious about family photos. One whole wall in our bedroom is just pictures—no frames. Tape and push pins. Honest and alive and fun.

How we keep it calm (not cluttered)

• One strong voice in the room. Let one piece lead; let the rest support.

• Just hang it. When I come home from a trip, I hang the painting. I don’t wait to have a whole collection on a wall. Hopefully the wall will be full when I’m 90. When you hang what you love, it works.

• Start at eye level. ~57" center works for most rooms. 

• Leave air. Give at least 2" between frames so the art can breathe...although I have totally broken this rule and its fine.

What to collect (so the story reads clearly)

• Anchors. One statement piece per main room—a painting you love that holds meaning.

• Memory pieces. Small works tied to a place, a trip, a moment. Rocks are often our memory.

• Be creative. On our latest trip to Switzerland, I didn’t buy a painting. I bought an antique cowbell because every village had that sound. It’s perfect for us.

• Cultivate what’s precious. If it doesn’t say anything about your life, it’s filler. Skip it.

   

  The first image is of our rocks-they line my fireplace mantle. If we buy them, I leave the price on to remind myself.

  Second image, taxidermy from a canoe trip in Wisconsin. We have taken exactly ONE canoe trip with our five kids.

  Third image, Collection of paintings, most from trips-some collected from artists I adore. Middle bottom is one of the many vintage paint by numbers I collect. 

   

    

If you want help

I paint in a modern cloisonnist language—bold lines and layered color—because I seem to believe boundaries help stories sit side by side without noise AND i love line work. If you’re building a home that sounds like your life- I’d love to help you choose a piece or plan a commission.
Next steps: see my work in person at The District Gallery or reach out and come to my studio · commissions welcomed · join the newsletter for first looks.

Walking at Concord Park the other morning along the edge of the lake, I noticed a lot of squishy pink underfoot. I stopped and looked closer. Hidden in the weeds beside the path was a small wild persimmon tree, its fruit scattered across the grass and pavement.

At first it just looked like a mess — soft fruit, fallen leaves, mud. But when I crouched down, the colors caught me. Oranges, pinks, lilacs. The light on the fruit really shined, and I could have missed it completely under all those weeds. I had never seen a wild persimmon tree before, and I fell instantly in love.

Attentiveness is a skill I’ve loved to develop as an artist. When I slow down and pay attention, each day reveals a new kind of awe — and a growing belief that wonders never cease. To be fully present means noticing what’s already here. That awareness feels like training: training my eyes to see and my heart to stay awake. Training my eye to translate this three-dimensional world into two.

Back in the studio, I painted a small study of those persimmons, trying to hold onto that moment by the lake. Later, I made a larger painting from it — more memory than copy. What stayed with me wasn’t just the color, but the reminder that beauty can hide in plain sight.

Sometimes I think painting is simply learning to see again — and again, and again.

I’m finishing my newest body of work, tentatively titled What the Light Held Together.

I painted this series while preparing to say goodbye to my son as he leaves for college.
Preparing my daughter for her senior year of high school.

 Look at that fun backpack!

There’s a lot in this moment.
Letting go.
Watching them step into the next chapter.
Knowing the day-to-day will change.

So much is unknown. I no longer get to just look at my son to get a pulse on how he’s doing.

This face will be five hours away. 

I think this series is about trusting God to hold the whole story when I can’t see it. Hopefully this blog is a tiny glimpse into my creative process. Sometimes my art is simply about capturing the moment in front of me — like when I paint plein air and respond directly to the light, colors, and shapes I see. Other times, like now, my work is a wrestle with my current life — studio paintings that work out the layers of emotion, memory, and curiosities I have.

For more than 20 years, I’ve kept a tapestry hung backwards in my house. I like the reminder -Most days we see the underside—knots, loose threads, shapes that don’t make sense. The front is ordered and whole, but it isn’t always my view yet. The front of mine is actually a gorgous portrait and its one of my favorite possessions, but still I insist on hanging it to see only the ugly confusing underside. Because isn't that life? We only see the part now, one day we will see the whole of how all of our stories fit together. 

I wish I wasn’t sad to watch him drive away. I think I would like to be one of the moms who only feels excitement and anticipation and has a perfect perspective. But like most of life, there’s tension here today.
I am so deeply sad and will miss him with everything in me — and I am so happy for him to take this next step.

There are many stories like this — moments where we don’t get the full picture. What the Light Held Together is my reminder that beauty can live in that gap. That life is actually lived in the gap-there is no complete picture. That even when I only see the confusing backside of the tapestry, the front is still being woven.

Here is a small glimpse into my new collection. I think only a few will have these broken lines, but it was like something in me NEEDED to paint like this for a while. 

If you’re in a season of this deep awareness of not seeing the whole picture — for whatever reason — I am so with you. I’m learning, slowly, to trust that the Light will hold what I can’t, and to rest in the fact that it was never mine to hold in the first place.

How I Became an Artist (Even Though It Didn’t Look Like It at First)

I’m an artist. And when people hear that, I think they assume I’ve always known it. That I probably grew up with a sketchbook in one hand and a paintbrush in the other. That I visited galleries as a kid and spent hours copying the masters.

Well… maybe. But not really. Not in the way you'd think.

I spent most of my childhood outside. We ran barefoot through the neighborhood, rode our bikes everywhere, caught tadpoles, and named baby ducks. We weren’t trying to be anything—we were just creating whole worlds from nothing. And now that I look back, I see it was all imagination. All early art.

I wasn’t the “art kid.” I didn’t enter contests. I didn’t have a favorite artist. I wanted to be a teacher or a model—which is honestly kind of embarrassing to write now, but probably a product of my 80s upbringing. The point is: I had no clear artistic ambition. Just a deep love of wonder, beauty, and making things.

I took an art class my senior year of high school, just to check off a credit. But something about it felt alive. I remember thinking: Oh. This is what it feels like to wake up to something. I still have my self-portrait collage from that class—and I treasure it.

Even then, I didn’t pursue it. I showed up at the college art department with no portfolio—just hope and a shaky explanation. I was turned away quickly. I didn’t belong, at least not in the way they needed me to.

So I did what a lot of people do. I picked something practical. I studied dental hygiene. It wasn’t creative, but it was solid. Something people understood.

Years later, after I was married and working, my grandfather-in-law invited me to take some art classes with him. I was the youngest person there by decades, sitting beside retirees learning how to paint. We copied other artists’ work—classic landscapes, flowers, Italian villas. I got better. Learned to mix color, pay attention to proportion, maybe even squint at shadows.

But still, I didn’t feel like an artist. I felt like someone who liked art. Someone who could be “pretty good” at it. Someone dabbling.

The truth is, I didn’t start believing I could really be an artist until two things happened:

1. I got a mentor

2. I saw art up close

My mentor told me something simple that changed everything: "Make the work only you can make."
Not what you think others want. Not what sells. Not what looks impressive.
What’s in you.

I had never thought of art that way—like something as personal as DNA. That it could come from your own life, your memory, your faith, your story.

Around the same time, I started traveling more and visiting art museums. I remember seeing original works by Van Gogh, Hodler, and Monet. Paintings I’d only seen in books suddenly felt human—messy, alive, textured, flawed, holy. I stood in front of paintings that made me cry. Not because they were perfect, but because they made me feel something true.

And no—I hadn’t known these artists my whole life. I didn’t grow up dreaming of seeing them in person. But when I did, they stopped me in my tracks. They changed me.

That’s when I realized that art doesn’t have to be tidy or impressive. It just has to be real.

Now I paint as much as I can in the margins of real life—while raising kids, managing a home, and running a business. It’s not romantic or easy. It’s built on discipline, quiet study, and staying awake to the beauty around me. I paint voraciously. I read and research and sketch. I keep learning.

I didn’t become an artist all at once. I became one slowly—through detours and surprises, through copywork and curiosity, through mentors and museums, through motherhood and faith.

And maybe that’s the real story behind most artists.
Not instant talent.
But the long, quiet work of becoming.

thanks for listening-Amanda

It’s the question that never quite goes away. Whether I’m working alone in my studio or painting outside with friends, there’s always that little voice asking: Is it done yet? I don't want to overwork but I want to tell enough of the story.

When I’m out plein air painting with friends, I’m guilty of looking at my friends' work and jumping in with, “Don’t touch it! That sky is perfect!” And sometimes they LOVE that, but the truth is, I don’t know what they’re aiming for. I don’t know the vision behind the marks they’re making. And while those comments often help me realize I’m about to overwork something, most of the time, I need to remind myself: let the artist do their thing.

Because finishing a painting isn’t about pleasing someone else’s eye—it’s about knowing when you’ve said what you came to say.

I recently painted a group of lemons in a modern cloisonnist style, using bold outlines that almost fracture the image. And yet, that fragmentation is the point. The lines create a kind of brokenness—and within that, a wholeness.

While I was still in the process, people walked into my studio and told me the painting was beautiful before I ever added the lines. That’s always tempting—to stop when others are pleased. But I hadn’t said what I wanted to say yet. For me, the outlines weren’t just an aesthetic choice. They were part of the meaning. These lemons aren’t just about color or shape; they’re about how our lives can feel disjointed, even while something beautiful is forming. Wholeness doesn’t have to mean smooth or polished. Sometimes, it’s held together by contrast, texture, tension. Sometimes the beauty is buried beneath all the complications.

So how do I know when a painting is finished? 
I don't know. I just know.
Maybe it is when I believe it holds a presence: flawed, layered, and full.

And truly, as long as I’m holding a brush, no painting ever feels completely safe from being changed. That’s the danger of keeping work around for too long—I’ll almost always want to “fix” it with fresh eyes.

But I really push myself to leave it alone. I have to respect the version of me who painted it then.

Creating art is vulnerable. Especially when I look at something I made a year ago and know that time, growth, and experience would push me to make different choices today. That’s part of it, though—each painting captures a moment, not just in the subject, but in me.

-Amanda