what pictures/art do you have

[cheeryface]

on your living room walls??

need inspiration and am nosey!

We have two original John Miller paintings we bought when they were (comparatively) cheap and we were (comparatively) rich. They've been up for 10 years and more and we still love them.

thanks loler. I love it. That one & the one I have are inspired by arial shots of Australia (ours is called shallow reef)

It was our wedding present from my mum (we chose it, her taste ain't so hot!) - cost I think about £650 about 7 years so....

i have a large mixed media by me over the mantlepiece...it is inspired possibly by chagal

and is a dream

it is a house that i lived in when i did it

with protraits of the children and me except that only ds is vaguely recognizable as the girls are in very faint silhouette and i am in abstract as an entiwned figure in scarlet but very pale so as to look pink..that is actually a tiny representation of a series of prints I made representing eroticism

there is also a ladder which is related to stairway to heaven both the song and the biblical story and

as a whole the work is about dream

it's one of three

We have 2 Jack Vettriano prints bought 6 years ago. I loved them for ages, but have gone off them.

No idea what I will replace them with.

DS has started on his own graffiti gallery. Felttip on woodchip.

AIBU to be proud that his drawing is actually rather good for his age?

Anyone going to admit to having one of these?

Lol, I could not remember the painter's name, so just googled "painting kitsch thomas"

Scottish 50s/60s things - Anne Redpath, Robin Philipson, Elizabeth-Blackadder's-husband (poor bloke, I can't even recall his name); and Cornish stuff - inc. a jolly odd John Miller which is a deep purply vermiliony thing which is presumably a verging-on-abstract sunset on cliffs piece, but has always seemed to me a bit femalely visceral. (Which is extra odd, given John Miller.) Very unlike his usual white-strand-blue-tide meditative thang.

Recently, there has been a stealthy tide of ebay-sourced etchings (this is what dh does in the small hours) inc. gorgeous eerie Erik Desmazieres things. He deserves to be better known, I think he's marvellous.

An original Tom Early

A couple of big Anita Kleins (bought years ago when we had money)

An original semi-abstract fish painting we bought in Padstow

Lots of photos of DD

Need more pictures but too poor these days [wistful]

Oh, and the de rigeur mystery footprints on recently painted wall above sofa.

HairyIrene - actually, bareness rather suits this apartment - it was built in 1929 and has typical architecture for the period, with parquet floors throughout and a lot of very geometric mouldings on the walls. So it's quite decorative without anything on the wall at all.

Not sure I want to put pictures up in the sitting room or dining room at all, though I'd like my framed family polyphoto collection to line the (very long) corridor. Haven't managed to negotiate that happily yet but will get there in the end, no doubt .

We have two large black and white framed prints of sean connery as james bond and then some smaller black and white prints in clip frames of early pics of the beatles and stones. I love black and white photographs and all our family pics are in individual frames on shelves and things throughout the flat. Have a collection of degas ballerina prints in our hallway as well!!

Have old postcards of our old farmhouse in the Lakes in my cosy beamed sitting room - they are sepia.

Black and whie photos in clip frames of the dc taken by amateur photogrpher xdp on walls upstairs (example in my profile pics)

Would like Schiele in my bedroom but have none as I lost ll my prints.

In kitchen we have dc's art and a painting by a friend which is randomly blue-tac-ed up.

We have proper oils all over the place, big ones too. Bloody nightmare to insure - don't go down this route!

I chucked out the Monet prints when I reached a certain age, and went to the Tate On Demand website. I got these printed on stretched canvas;

A Turner seascape in the hall.
A Gilbert & George (downloaded from when Alan Yentob interviewed them) at the top of the stairs (which the kids are scared of).
A John Cotman seascape, and a Sir Arnesby Brown landscape in the living room.
A Dora Carrington in the other living room.
Also, a paper print of Simon Patterson's 'The Great Bear' tube map.

And there are some of my dabblings around (mainly family portraits).

anna8888
your apartment sounds beautiful actually, i love that era of architecture

guess i was imagining that echo-ey sound you get when decorating /moving

i wish i had mirror collection

found a brilliant oval bakelite one at a fair
dh huffed and puffed berating it at every turn but it looks beautiful up....

We have some Govinder Nazram Paintings and a huge Rolf Harris (DH reckons will be worth a fortune when he pops his clogs!) - none are on the wall though as we have moved and not sure the walls will take them in this house without half the wall coming down!

I have to say none of them - other than the pictire of our house I had painted for DH for Xmas - were my choices - he is a History of Art Graduate and is a bit more choosy than I would ever be!

in our living room we have:

a resin book by a local artist bought about 10 years ago

2 road prints bought from a printmakers fair

a vintage Polish circus poster

and a framed piece of wrapping paper from Paperchase

I also have, and this is quite bizarre really, an oil painting of my mum done by my Dad's lover at the time, now new wife.

I love the painting. It's a brilliant likeness and her expression in it speaks volumes to me.

I also have an oil painting of my Great Great Aunt Alice, who was a midwife and who saved the life of my Grandmother when she was born. She came out blue and was tossed on the bed given up for lost apparently and while the others concentrated on helping my great grandmother, Great Great Aunt Alice breathed life into my Grandmother for which, obviously, I owe my life.

Both these paintings are very special to me.

oh also a pic of a house that dd1 drew

this has the best frame of the lot

Loads of rubish on my walls that dh has bought home from house clearance's and Auctions, nothing i actualy like but we cant agree on anything so dh just sticks anything up.

we have got a Klimt and a Durer

both posters obviously not the originals

Two small (about 15"x18") original watercolours of local scenes (landscapes) that were sold at a charity sale, A limited ed. print donated to another local charity.
A small Polish tapestry I haven't figured out how to hang it yet, though.

Most the walls are covered with originals by DC or posters out of newspapers, plus an original oil painting portrait of me by a relative, and some enlarged photos of DC... And one large expensive mirror (oak frame).

couple of prints that DH has got me for my birthday a couple of years ago including one of Glastonbury tor (which is my fav place in the world) Couple of panoramic posters of places we have visited pre pg - Sydney, NY, Dublin and a range of Ikea cheapies in the living room.

Loads of framed studenty posters (klimt, rothko) in the hallway.

Ohh and we also have a huge ethnic wallhanging from a glastonbury festival trip about 5 years ago

Doesn't sound very child friendly does it but am only 17+1 so loads of time to go yet.

HairyIrene - yes, I love that era too - the very best apartments in Paris were built in the late 1920s. There was money enough for proper urban planning (where we live was no-go zone that was transformed in a big urban project between 1926 and 1933) and high quality architecture and design, and the domestic accommodation of that period, although designed for a different lifestyle (full-time maids, no refrigerators or washing machines...), can be used quite comfortably in the 21st century.

Curiously, and coincidentally, my sister lives in a two-floor flat in Amsterdam of exactly the same era and also in an urban design project. We endlessly compare our two homes and hypothesise about the similarities and diffferences in lifestyle between Paris and Amsterdam then - and compare with the present day. Fascinating.

A bit off-topic. Oh well.

Mirrors are quite easy to collect in that there are lots around and you can get all kinds of interesting decorative effects even with quite cheap ones from junk shops.

anna... have dream that i am be offered an apartment designed by corbusier, (name escapes me)
yeh, i know in my dreams!...

i love it when the style and arrangement of a building transcends the original purpose...
it sounds really stylish and appreciated too!

HairyIrene - yes, I love it . And you know what - my partner chose it all on his own and had already moved in by the time I first saw it as I was stuck in England with my breastfed baby I couldn't leave and for whom I couldn't get a passport fast enough for me to travel to Paris before we had to take a decision on the apartment.

However, since we had endlessly talked about what we were after and I know the housing stock here quite well, I trusted him - but it was even better than I had dreamed when I first saw it .

What a terrible thread hi-jack. But it's nice to talk about.