The Roots of Wallpaper and Patterns

Crow With Art Deco Wallpaper
6″x24″
mixed media on clayboard (sides are painted red)

I have written before about my love of wallpaper. I think that it stems from the 17 room B & B hotel that my parents run in Victoria.

I was seven when we first moved into what we call the Guesthouse. There were many rooms in this three story 1913 Arts and Crafts house and most were wallpapered. My dad refreshed many of these rooms with new wallpaper (remember, this was the seventies so wallpaper was very popular). There were different textures, patterns and colours, all of which I was fascinated by.

The front hallway of the guest house has an amazing floral print with black background. It reminds me very much of the Art deco wallpaper I have painted in the above piece.

Once again, I can not help but return to the ghosts of my past. The stuff that fills our senses at such a young age, that stuff sticks with us and forms who we are with out our even realizing. The problem for me now is that I realize that and every time something happens to Imogen or Scarlett I think “How is that going to shape them? What will that do them as a forty year old woman? What will they be remembering?”

Wallpaper, back to the wall paper.

My dad wallpapered my entire room in baroque pink. It was an attic room so he even did the ceiling!
He was/is good at wallpaper. He taught me how. One winter we wallpapered all the bathrooms in the guesthouse in various stripes. It was fun and I got pretty good at it. Another time we wallpapered the ceiling of the front room with embossed wallpaper; NOT so fun.

I remember, on a trip to Orcas Island when I was around twelve, lying on my bed at The Outlook Inn, drawing the wallpaper. It was raining so hard that we had to stay in. I think that it rained all that weekend but I did have a full colour representation of our hotel room’s wallpaper by the end of it.

It is funny because I am not much for prints or patterns on my clothing. I like solids.
In my paintings, however, I love patterns. People will tell me it reminds them of Matisse. And as much as I love Matisse, and I do, it is my mother who has blessed me with my fascination of prints. Her style can only be described as eclectic. She manages to put together a hundred different prints in one room and make it looks fabulous. She loves it, so it goes. It is as pure as that. No swatches to match this with that at the fabric store. She decorates with her heart and her rooms reflect that. They are as comfortable and warm as being wrapped up in her arms, pressed so close to her bosom that you can hear her heart beat.