One of the toughest parts of designing a home are the finishing touches – accessories, styling, and most importantly ART. I am by no means an art snob – and while I do appreciate fine art and of the moment artists, I also strongly believe that the value of a piece of art is determined by how well you connect with it and how it makes you feel. So for today’s post, I am sharing some of my affordable art sources and young artists that I am currently crazy about.
This site has been around for a while now and was one of the first websites to curate affordable art for the masses. They create print editions of contemporary fine art to give them a lower price point and make them available in many sizes.
They have a huge selection of paintings, photography and prints, all very contemporary and cool. They also have a selection called Little Collector, which has some not so typical kid’s art. Although they do have the obligatory baby animal prints, they also have interesting and modern pieces like these:
Now this is a genius idea…Artfully Walls not only provides a great selection of affordable prints, but also curates pre-arranged gallery walls, which by the way, can be quite challenging and overwhelming to do on your own. You can browse by style (eclectic, bohemian chic, etc.) and see what selections they recommend:
This is the current selection for “mid-century modern” style gallery wall. You can even see what it would look like in a real environment.
They also recently started carrying the work of Anna Ullman, who I am a huge fan of. She does larger pieces as well that can be purchased from her directly (click on her name to see her full portfolio), but she is selling prints of her work on Artfully Walls:
I first came across Zoe Bios at Las Vegas Market last summer. They have their own in-house artwork and also carry other up and coming artists. Their most popular work are bright, colorful abstracts. These are not prints but are still extremely reasonably priced. I recently used their “Wabi Sabi” series in our Westlake project kitchen:
We had them framed in natural wood frames to offset the color & metallic within the art. Here are some pieces from their new collection I also really like:
Kerri Rosenthal has some really interesting art, that are different from a lot of the abstract art I am seeing right now. Her signature “drippy heart” would fit in almost any space – nursery, master bedroom, kitchen. I also have a thing for her “painted palms” series:
From her “Drippy Hearts” collection.
From her “Painted Palms” collection.
If you are feeling crafty (and cash poor), I do have a DIY trick for you. I am generally NOT a DIY person, but this is so simple even I could do it. Head to Papyrus or Paper Source or any other fancy paper goods store and purchase a large sheet of decorative paper and pop it into a matted frame. You can also use large pieces of wallpaper – sometimes vendors will give you a fairly big sample. I used this gold textured paper for our Calabasas guest bathroom when we couldn’t find anything else that felt right:
Here are some other examples of papers you can find at Paper Source that would look nice (and expensive!) in a frame:
Hope this solves some art dillemas out there. xo, AE
