From Abstract Art to Interior Design | The Colour Nest

My move from abstract art to interior design is not a change of direction. It is a step more deeply into something that has belonged to me for many years. 

I trained and qualified as an interior designer, but my relationship with space began long before that qualification. Interiors have always been one of the great passions of my life: the way colour changes a room, how materials respond to light and how carefully chosen objects influence the way a space feels.

Painting gave me a visual language. Interior design allows me to live inside it.

Returning to a Lifelong Interior Design Practice

My abstract art and interior design practices have never felt separate. Both begin with observation and develop through colour, proportion, rhythm, tension and balance.

On canvas, I might spend days adjusting the relationship between two colours. Within an interior, the same attention moves towards paint, tiles, textiles, lighting, furniture and the position of an object within a room.

The scale changes, but the questions remain: What does this colour need beside it? Where should the eye rest? What creates tension? What allows a space to breathe?

Moving from painting into interior design is therefore not a departure. It continues The Colour Nest practice, bringing art, object, and space into closer relation.

How Abstract Painting Shapes My Interior Design

Painting has taught me that colour never exists alone. It changes with light, scale, texture, and everything placed beside it.

The same principle guides my approach to art-led interior design.

I can spend hours comparing tiles that initially appear almost identical. Under changing light, one may hold warmth while another makes the room feel closed. Paint samples move from wall to wall and are observed in the morning, afternoon and evening.

A surface may intensify a colour, soften it, or change how another material is understood. These decisions take time because a room reveals itself slowly.

The aim is not to make everything match. It is to create a visual rhythm in which every colour and material has a reason to be present.

Choosing Colour, Tiles and Materials for a Home

Developing an interior involves hundreds of small decisions. Choosing the right tile or paint colour is not an isolated task; every choice affects the larger composition.

Consider a tile alongside the flooring, wall colour, and changing daylight. You must understand a paint colour at the scale of the room, not through a small sample. Texture, reflection and finish can completely alter how a colour is experienced.

The process involves looking, testing, adjusting and returning. Sometimes a decision that seems right on paper feels entirely different once it enters the physical space.

This careful process is not separate from creativity. It is the practice itself.

The House as an Art-Led Interior

I am now building a real home around these ideas.

The House is not a showroom or an imagined interior created only for photographs. It is a lived space that develops through daily routines, changing light and the gradual arrival of paintings, materials and objects.

I want every room to feel like a collection—not simply a collection of beautiful things, but a collection of relationships and considered choices.

An object earns its place through what it contributes to the whole. A tile affects a wall's colour. A painting changes the weight of the furniture around it. A crystal gathers light. A lamp introduces atmosphere and shadow.

Each decision becomes part of the interior experience.

The space is not a backdrop for the art. It is part of the work.

From Canvas to Interior Space

Many of the techniques I use in abstract painting also guide the house's development.

There is layering and reduction. I test colour and material. There is an awareness of positive and negative space, and the discipline of knowing when something should be added, moved or removed.

Sometimes the right decision arrives immediately. More often, it takes repeated observation and adjustment.

This is why the project cannot be hurried. I am not applying a finished interior style to a series of rooms. I am allowing a visual language to develop through the process of making and living.

Paintings, print editions and art objects from the studio will sit alongside furniture, lighting and carefully selected pieces for the home. The Colour Nest will create some elements; others will be chosen for how they enter into conversation with the work.

Together, they will form an environment in which abstract art moves beyond the canvas and becomes part of everyday life.

Building a Creative Home Over Time

I think of the house as a lifetime project rather than something moving towards a final reveal.

A lived interior is never truly finished. It changes as we change. Objects move, colours are understood differently, and new relationships appear over time.

The house will become a place to test ideas, observe materials, and understand how art can inhabit a room. It will hold the techniques, knowledge and careful decisions that have developed across my life as both an abstract artist and an interior designer.

This step forward feels deeply personal. It brings together two parts of my practice that have always belonged to the same inner world.

I am not simply designing a house. I am creating a living space where painting, interior design, objects, and daily life can continue to shape one another—a physical expression of The Colour Nest that will keep evolving over time.

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