Devon woman transforms entire house into a work of art

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BBC A blonde women smiles in front of a colourful staircase in the hallway of her family home. Painted birds cover the walls.BBC

Emily Powell hand-painted every inch of her home with vibrant pictures of things that are important to her family

A terraced family home has been turned into a lived-in work of art with paintings spanning from floor to ceiling in every room.

It is the work of Devon artist Emily Powell, who is known for vibrant and colourful canvases.

She said she “suddenly let loose” after beginning the work a decade ago, hand-painting everything inside the property, from light switches to the fridge and even the toilet.

Her Brixham home and the artwork, which is called The Art of the Living, was opened to a small number of ticketholders this week.

Powell has had two solo shows at London’s Portland Gallery and last week gave a talk about her artistic style at the Royal Academy of Arts, also in London.

Local exhibitions have included showing a body of work from her residency in the Isles of Scilly and work she painted in the Arctic, which she put on display at her studio on Dartmoor at Ullacombe Farm.

grey placeholderAlun Callender A dinning room with pink walls, features hand painted pictures of Dutch blue and white pottery associated with Holland. A wooden table and chairs is in the centre of the picture with flowers and cake on it.Alun Callender
grey placeholderAlun Callender The picture shows a dark emerald green sofa with a ginger cat on it. The walls of the room are red with flowers painted on them. A large painting of flowers also leans against the wall.Alun Callender

The dining room features paintings of Delftware pottery on the walls and table, a reminder of Powell’s time in Holland

Powell painted the living room red because she wanted it to feel cosy and warm

Her open house is very different to a gallery experience.

It is immersive and features a circus full of animals in party hats in her daughter’s playroom, while Dutch-influenced cups and plates are painted on the walls as well as the front of the kitchen fridge.

A fig tree adorns the ceiling in the hallway and birds fly up the stairs along the walls.

Showing visitors around, Powell explained every room was designed to bring out different emotions.

“It’s all about the colour,” she said.

“So I chose the colour to balance out how I’m feeling and how I want the family to feel in certain rooms.”

grey placeholderA couple sit back on a sofa and look at the circus animals and big top painted on the walls

Hundreds of people have booked tickets to see the house

The paintings merge and flow into one another as you progress through the house.

Guests walk from a skyline of Paris apartment buildings in the hallway, to a field of Scottish flowers in the master bedroom.

Powell said: “It started off as just trying out things in the new house that I’d bought.

“It was our first house, we were out of rented accommodation.

“So I could suddenly let loose.

“It grew and grew and grew and now it’s out of hand.”

The house is an antidote to minimalist interiors but, as her husband Jack Powell explains, sometimes the painted floor makes it hard to see his daughter’s toys.

He also said there was always the risk of leaning against a new design still wet with paint.

“I don’t think there’s an item of clothing that doesn’t have paint on it,” he said.

“Someone came in and said, ‘You’ve got paint on your toothbrushes – do you know that?’.”

The open house ends on 7 December and is sold out with a waiting list of 500 people.

Powell said visitors with tickets had come from as far as the United States to see what she had created.

She has now run out of surfaces to paint in this house, so plans to sell up and start a new chapter in her creativity all over again.

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