Designer Desire: Marina Strocchi

Montage of Marina Strocchi artworks

This week’s featured Designer Desire artist hails from Down Under. Marina Strocchi (b. 1961) is a fine artist and printmaker working primarily with acrylic on linen.

Born in Melbourne to an Australian mother and Italian father, she has lived in Central Australia for many years – an environment that heavily informs her artistic practice.

She has exhibited internationally and her work is included in the collections of Art Gallery of Western Australia, the National Gallery of Victoria.

In her artist statement, she explains:

The surface of the painting is my main concern, along with the structure of the drawing. I try to suggest the qualities of nature in my lines and colours. The landscapes of the central and western deserts are currently my primary inspiration. I am also inspired by road trips to places elsewhere. I sometimes take a point of perspective that could be described as a sweeping bird’s eye view. I use the patterns of nature and a desert palette to recreate fragments of memory. I have memories that seem to slowly become part of the present in my work. The openness of nature is what most inspires me.

Her work sometimes comes up for auction and is also available to purchase from Art Images Gallery, Jan Murphy Gallery, Studio 5 and Australian Galleries.

Portrait of Marina Strocchicredit

Here’s Strocchi, showing some of her most recent works which were inspired by a 2019 residency she undertook in New York.

Designer Desire: Martin John Fowler

Montage of Martin John Fowler paintings

Martin John Fowler is a fine artist working in the Yorkshire/Lincolnshire borders. He travels recording the wild coastal areas from the Scottish isles to the hidden coves of Cornwall. He was born and raised in the mining towns of South Yorkshire. He studied drawing and painting at Doncaster College of Art. He went on to study painting and printmaking at Sheffield College of Art, acquiring a BA (hons) in Fine Art.

We first noticed his work while walking past the window of  Oriel y Bont in Aberystwyth town centre. We really love his paintings; they’re forged using bright, primary colours and are full of movement. Most of the paintings we’ve chosen to include in our montage come from Fowler’s The Prevailing Sense of Change series:

Drawing and painting working on my ongoing project intensified by the prevailing sense of change in Coastal working ports from childhood memories to the present which record and reflect the constant change and adaptions of an entire way of life. Recording in sketches and paintings

Head to Martin John Fowler’s Instagram feed to view a huge selection of his portfolio.

 

 
 
 
 
 
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All images: Martin John Fowler ©

Designer Desire: Marcel Gromaire

Montage of Marcel Gromaire paintings | H is for Home

Marcel Gromaire (1892-1971) was a French fine artist and painter of buildings landscapes, portraits and nudes.

When dentist and art collector, Dr Maurice Girardin discovered Gromaire, he purchased his entire back catalogue. Unsurprisingly, Dr Girardin was also a supporter and patron of another of our favourite artists, Bernard Buffet. On his death,  Girardin had 110 Gromaires in his collection.

In 2011, Gromaire’s L’après-midi d’été (1930), sold at Sotheby’s in Paris for $295,477 USD.

If you can’t afford one of his originals, there are prints available on Etsy and eBay. In addition, there is a brilliant looking book – Marcel Gromaire: L’élégance de la force – available on Amazon.

Portrait of Marcel Gromairecredit

Additional image credits:

Christies | Invaluable

Top tips when painting a room

Top tips when painting a room | H is for Home

Adding a new splash of colour to a room is a fantastic way of improving the design. It also happens to be one of the simplest ideas out there. It won’t cost a fortune, it doesn’t take long, and you can do it all yourself.

If you’re thinking about painting a room and switching up the colour scheme, then here are some pro tips to make the whole experience go smoothly:

Tins of white paint

Choose quality paint

Firstly, arm yourself with good-quality paint. This ensures that your paint actually sticks to the walls and doesn’t peel off after a few weeks. Look for top brands like Dulux, then choose whatever colours are to your taste. There are lots of Dulux paint deals out there, so you can still get amazing quality paint products without paying loads for them. So, there’s your first step: be sure to have some long-lasting and top-tier paint.

Brushes dipped in different coloured paint

Make sure the colours match

The worst mistake you can make is to paint your entire room only to realise the colours don’t go with one another. As such, spend time making sure that you pick a colour scheme that actually works. To make your life easier, We’ve already published a post on successful colour combos for the home. Check it out, and buy your paint accordingly.

Cleaning a wall with a sponge

Clean the walls

Before you apply any paint, you need to clean the walls. This ensures that you have a fresh surface for the paint to stick to. If it’s dirty or dusty, then the paint simply won’t adhere to the surface very well at all.

Roller with white paint

Strain the paint

Even if you have a brand new bucket of paint, it could have a few gloopy bits in it. These are basically little balls where the paint has congealed slightly. To avoid getting these on your walls and messing up the finish, simply put your paint through a strainer. This is basically like a sieve, but for paint! Anything that’s not liquid will be caught in the strainer, leaving you with lovely smooth paint to apply to your walls.

It’s also worth adding that you should cover your paint while you are painting. This will prevent one of the biggest painting problems of a skin forming on the top surface. If this does happen, you’ll have to strain your paint again.

Tin of purple paint

Use a brush on the outside edges

Get a brush and use it to start painting around the edges of your wall. It’s a good idea to put some tape down on the adjacent walls to prevent paint from going over an edge onto that wall. The purpose of a brush is to make it easier to get the paint roller out. When you have a few inches of paint around the edges, you can then use a roller without worrying about going over the lines onto the other walls.

Following all of this, you can use a roller and go up and down the wall to cover it really quickly. Then, you’ll have a freshly painted wall that needs to dry. Once dry, you can move any furniture back into place and bask in the new colour scheme.

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