The results of acting impulsively

I think perhaps around the same time that I cut eight inches of my hair off, I also decided to introduce some colour into our home. After this visit where I passed through the John Lewis cushion department something odd happened and I started thinking about colours, and our lack of them, in a way that made me actually walk out to the car and get into it with the purpose of going out to buy paint when my sister came over and looked through paint samples with me. I painted while she and my mother baked cookies with the my children. I painted while she and my mother sat and chatted to me and I carried on painting after they'd gone home. It took me eight coats and two days to turn achieve the shade of red wine I had in mind. Unfortunately, my husband came home when I was only on coat number two and my sister and I still howl with laughter at his somewhat out of character reaction to the painting of the fireplace. I think he was in shock (I should say, for those that haven't painted with red emulsion before, that it goes on a vivid fuchsia pink and only becomes red once fully dry).


Image scan by Tastes Orangey

After he'd recovered and we'd both got used to the new colour, we realised that what had hung on the chimney breast no longer looked quite right and took it down, which left the great expanse of nothingness that can be seen in the photo above. Find us a nice painting, my husband said. But nothing was right. I'm not sure that paintings can be hunted for in that purposeful way. But luckily, shortly after, I stumbled upon Tastes Orangey and the moment I saw Clare's paintings they felt so exactly right that I knew we couldn't not have one and my husband agreed. We chose two in the end. It's hard to pinpoint what makes a painting feel right, isn't it. Perhaps it's something different for all of us. But for me, I think it's something to do with it evoking a feeling that it could only possibly have been created for you - a feeling of visually 'coming home' when you look at it, an 'of course that would belong on my wall' feeling.

Image scan by Tastes Orangey

A few weeks on and I'm not entirely sure what came over me with the hair cutting or the red fireplace. Did I have to have so much cut off....did I have to pick such a bold colour for our colour injection. In an ideal world I'd stick my hair back on (although happily my hair grows so quickly that it's not actually worth worrying over) and I'm not entirely sure that I'm a red fireplace sort of person, but I adore our Tastes Orangey prints and these will most definitely be staying. Do go and take a look at Clare's work - she's incredibly prolific, and there are so many that had something in that we loved that it took a long time to whittle down our choices. Oh, and for buyers outside America, the prints arrived very quickly, despite the need to cross oceans.

Our children think that it's me in the paintings (they do find me everywhere - basically anyone with dark hair -they constantly pick up magazines or newspapers and ask if it is me in the picture). They wonder what I'm doing with the dark-haired beardy man though, as he cannot be mistaken for their father.

Florence x