Residential · Art Advisory · Commissioned Art · Originals · Prints

Laid Back Luxury | Glenview, Illinois

This was one of the most comprehensive residential programs I have developed. A 5,100-square-foot Glenview home, originally defined by a more austere aesthetic, was transformed by Epic Interiors into something warm, layered, and deeply livable. The art program needed to match that ambition across multiple spaces, weaving together new commissions, curated acquisitions, and works the clients already owned into something that felt collected over time rather than assembled at once.

The great room commission was the anchor of the entire program. For a space with soaring two-story windows and views into the landscape beyond, I commissioned a large-scale oil painting by Melanie Parke, an artist whose work I have long admired and whose sensibility I knew would be exactly right for the scale and spirit of the room. Parke describes her own practice this way: reconstructing interiors and garden motifs through ideology and memory, collecting imagery representative of care, tenderness, and nostalgia, with an affection for slowness. That attentiveness to the interior life of spaces is precisely what this home called for.

There is a personal dimension to this placement that is worth naming. Years ago, my own painting practice was influenced by Melanie Parke's work. Now, one of my paintings hangs in the gallery entry of this same home alongside her commissioned piece. This is a reflection of the program's conceptual cohesiveness: two bodies of work that share a lineage now sharing a collection.

The gallery entry wall is the other defining element of this program. Designed to feel like a true gallery corridor, it brings together new acquisitions, works that hold personal meaning for the clients, and a sophisticated mix of genres including Ute Rathmann's figurative work, which adds a layer of art historical depth through her homage to old master figure drawing, creating a bridge between the contemporary and the classical that gives the collection real range and dimension.

Throughout the rest of the home, the program moves between spaces with coherence and intention, each placement considered in relationship to the room it inhabits and the works around it. The result is a home that feels genuinely collected, where the art tells a story that is both personal and curatorially considered.

Developed in collaboration with Epic Interiors. Photography: Cynthia Lynn Photography.