January 23, 2018

How Do I Know It Will Look Good? An Art Pair Collaboration

When I'm talking to people about buying art, I find that one of their biggest hesitations is wondering how a particular piece will look in their home, with their existing art.

My style is really eclectic. Will this art help fit in?

Other art in my room is very whimsical. How will these images look together?

Can you mix graphic images and photography? And how will that look?

How will these modern images look with my more traditional home and art?

No one wants to spend a chunk of change to order a piece of art online or bring it home from a gallery, only to find that it really doesn’t look as brilliant as you had hoped.

With these hesitations in mind, I’ve rounded up several fellow artists to share space on this blog. They’ve generously agreed to allow me to use one of their works and pair it with one of mine to give you an idea of how different pieces of art can work together.

The guest artist chooses which of their works they want me to match, and I choose one of my prints I think would look great on a wall with theirs. I’ll discuss why I chose the particular image from my collection for the match, and how I would hang the pair. I hope it gives you a chance to see how different artistic styles can work together, and to meet some super-talented artists who might be new to you. I’m linking to their sites, so be sure and check them out

This is a year-long project. I’ll be featuring a different artist each month. Hint: if you want to be reminded by email to come and check out these posts, join my Collectors Circle on the right.

Drumroll, please, here’s our first pair:

Amantha Tsaros

We’re kicking off the series with my good friend, ultra-exuberant-artist Amantha Tsaros.

Amantha’s uber-energetic colorful painting ‘Halo and Crown’, could be paired beautifully with a number of prints from my studio, but I chose ‘Lily Leaf Graphic’.

The bold black graphic picks up the black in the painting, and the simple design contrasts with the multi-textured surface of the painting. The contrast lets each piece enhance the other’s visual strengths. I’m showing ‘Lily Leaf Graphic’ as a 14x11” print, slightly smaller than Amantha’s painting--I think it balances better visually. The two works are stacked one above the other because hanging one vertically oriented work and one horizontally oriented side-by-side tends to look awkward. If you wanted to add a third piece into the mix, you could absolutely hang them side by side.