JOIN JANE CONTINUING TO MAKE SENSE OF ART
And this month Jane is moving and having to make major decisions!
January has been a busy month – I have been downsizing, considerably and it has been hard work, emotionally and physically!
Clothes, shoes, books and furniture have all been drastically culled with little time to follow the Marie Kondo method! With each bag and box leaving the house for the charity shop or the recycling centre the old house felt lighter and I breathed more easily!
My aim has been to keep my new home uncluttered and to ensure that everything that goes through the new front door is much loved and really needed. I generally found the process cathartic but the tricky bit has been decisions over my art collection and photographs.
Unlike my children who rarely print out photos I am of the generation where there are albums and albums of wonderful memory filled pictures and I have always had many in frames. However, they do take up a lot of space. So I have had to be very selective. This little space above some book shelves is about my childhood – me, my parents and siblings plus some little Victorian silhouettes of great grandparents. My new home is blessed with long windowsills – another great place for framed photographs.
I’ve always known that every piece of art in my home is important to me – it either has a story or a particular memory attached to it – evoking stronger emotions in me than the furniture I have collected. The large painting above is ‘Mother and Child’ by a Vietnamese artist called Binh. I bought 2 paintings from him in Hanoi and the 2 have always hung together. Sadly – for me, there just wasn’t the space for both of them so I was absolutely delighted that one of my daughters loves the other one and has the perfect space, which means I can carry on enjoying it whenever I visit her. My other children have also taken some paintings which gives me great delight.
It has been fun planning where to hang paintings and other bits of hanging art. With space at a premium I am using spaces that in a bigger house I probably wouldn’t have used. The painting of the 3 bowls has moved from a large wall to a rather tight space but as it is positioned between 2 white doors it really pings out of the wall. The 2 Thai wood carvings sit beautifully in an even narrower space again between 2 white doors.
‘Infinity’ by Sophie Hacker is one of my newest acquisitions and wasn’t in the right place in my old house – now it comes alive in the right space. This painting was part of an exhibition that I helped Sophie hang in Marylebone, in conjunction with a large commissioned piece she did for St Marylebone Parish Church.
So, what have I learnt through this process? Well, probably nothing new but it has just demonstrated to me how important it is to have connections with the art around us. It doesn’t have to be expensive or be an ‘investment’ it just has to be much loved, evoking memories of people, places and experiences.