Showing posts with label Country Homes and Interiors. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Country Homes and Interiors. Show all posts

15 September 2014

Introducing Painter in Residence Janice Issitt



I chose Janice Issitt to be a Painter in Residence because I love her use of bright, clashing colours and patterns. I knew she'd be absolutely perfect for it.

“Hi I’m Janice Issitt and I like weird colour combinations, and things that stand out with a punch. I guess that has come from my travels to India, Sweden Morocco, South America, and Japan. I like collecting things from all these places and working out how to put them together in an interior so it works. I find quite often it’s the colours that tie in the objects from places as far apart as Mumbay and Malmo.


Every picture tells a story – and my tattoo art does just that.

I worked in the music biz for a big record company which kindled my love of travel and photography. I use my house as my studio in which I photograph other peoples products  – people need mood shots and that’s what I do well – I show people how to incorporate that piece into their life (not just a product shot on white background). The whole of my downstairs house is like a giant prop. I’m currently working with West German 1960’s lava ware which has mad colours and effects that look like lava flow. I’m also advising a tattoo salon and I’ve just taken the plunge to tell my life story in tattoos, and I love stencilling. It’s very random.


And Annie's paint? 
I like the quickness of it, creating a colour effect really fast which is what I need to do for my photoshoots. I like my finishes to be either really matte or really shiny, not in between, and many paints just can’t do this. When I put Chalk Paint® on the wall it looks like velvet it doesn’t even look like paint – it looks different in different lights much more so than other paints.

I also really like her Craqueleur for achieving a crackled effect that brings out a depth in the colour and changes the colour.

I heard about Annie’s paint through the grapevine (I was scouring antiques fairs for ‘props’ to paint). I was getting bored with the other paint colours on offer so I starting buying tester pot after tester pot after tester pot of Chalk Paint® and realising that this is fantastic. I don’t have an allergy to this paint (I did to other brands) and I really like the colours and the fact that it was quick, so when you’re styling up for a photo session that’s great for creating a really beautifully coloured backdrop.

I like the fact that Annie is a businesswomen but she also has the creative flair. She’s very influential, she’s got a ‘history’, you can’t deny what she’s done and she’s done it a long while and she stuck to what she believes in for many, many years when it wasn’t as popular as it is now.

What you’ll see from me
So I’m really looking forward to showing my projects which include an Art Deco cupboard using Florence but crackled and dark wax and it looks really wicked and done with lots of gold and copper leaf – I’m really enjoying playing with these effects. I’m also styling a garden summer house (let’s say it ain’t no shed!) with stencilled panelled screens, dyed lace curtains painted in Emperor’s Silk and Henrietta, a little old cabinet in Antibes Green with Craqueleur and gold leaf, and a massive snowflake in  pink to name a few bits and pieces. ”

Heres a sneak peak of projects to come from Janice:





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2 May 2014

Take me home, country road…



Aaaah the 1980s… loud hair, shoulder pads, Dynasty, cocktails, ghettoblasters and glossy interior design magazines (and no world wide web). It was Maggie Thatcher’s Britain and Ronald Reagan’s USA – and a certain frisson that bonded the two. 

Boom… 
I remember the boom in home and interior magazines with designers and architects lifted onto pedestals as superstars, supported by the likes of Blueprint and The World of Interiors. House-proud owners and home improvers couldn’t get enough of magazines like House and Garden (renamed HG in the USA in 1988), Better Homes and Garden, and Country Living.

But this wasn’t about the make-do-and-mend chic we know and love today… no this was about decorating with lots of disposable income, it was about aspiration. So it was fascinating to find myself taken back by this cutting from one of the chief purveyors of aspiration – Country Homes and Interiors.


… and Bust
You’ll notice (if you read the piece) that I allude to spare money being tight –  (a philosophy that didn’t chime with the affluent,  yuppie, “loadsofmoney” culture prevailing back then especially in the magazines.) And it’s also fascinating because the things I do today, the vintage upcycling, the paint effects, the courses, and so on, shows I haven’t really detoured from since the 80s, but the zeitgeist is totally different today.


Anyway, it does provide a snapshot – literally and metaphorically – of where I was in April 1987! And how about the headline: “Bringing colour and light to homes is my profession”? Not a bad bit of time travelling and I love the posed portrait with David, my husband at the top of this post… 


… and of course the pic of my three little boys (for ‘Tom’ read ‘Felix’!) Hope you like this little ‘time capsule’ too.

Yours, Annie