Author: Marketing

Your living room is your sanctuary and the centerpiece of your home. It’s where people come to gather and relax in a space that is uniquely yours. That’s why choosing art for living rooms is so important — and so tricky!

With decades in the gallery business, we have many pro tips on how to choose and hang living room art decor properly.We’ll explore our key 9 recommendations below:

1. Choose Living Room Art Decor Wisely
2. Make Sure People Won’t Lean On Over-Sofa Art
3. Choose The Width of Over-Fireplace Art Correctly
4. Use Paper or Cardboard to Plan Out Art Hanging
5. Leave At Least 4 Inches Of Margin Space
6. Use The Right Hanging Materials for Heavy Artwork
7. Use A Level!
8. Hang A Salon-Style Gallery Wall Correctly
9. Consider Leaving Curating, Hanging, & Framing to a Professional

What You’ll Need

• A level
• A piece of paper or cardboard cut out to the size of your artwork
• Rulers or measuring tape
• Painter’s tape
• Nails or screws, depending on the size and weight of your artwork
• A hammer or drill
• The right drill bit for your screws and wall material

1. Choose Living Room Art Decor Wisely

Choosing the right art for living rooms is the hardest part of the process. You want art in your living room that:

• Speaks to you on a personal level
• Makes the space feel inviting and welcoming (it is a room for living, after all)
• Fits in your space and coordinates with your color scheme

Sometimes you have artwork in mind right away, but other times, picking the right living room art decor can cause stressful indecision. It doesn’t have to be so difficult if you know a few tips. When it comes to choosing living room art prints, keep these factors in mind. 

• Scale. Is your artwork too big or too small? Make sure you choose the correct margins and you’re hanging most pieces at eye level (more on that below).
• Height. Do you have enough wall height to hang the artwork at eye level, or will it look cramped? 
• Color. Does your artwork suit your interior’s color scheme?

2. Make Sure People Won’t Lean On Over-Sofa Art

Hanging art for your living room over your sofa is a great idea, but watch out: don’t hang your artwork so low that people can accidentally lean on it! 

Don’t fall for this pitfall, even if you think the artwork looks better if it’s slightly lower. Your artwork needs to stay safe and your space needs to stay liveable at the same time. 

3. Choose The Width of Over-Fireplace Art Correctly

Hanging living room art decor over a mantle? A general rule of thumb is to ensure the width of the painting is about as wide as the opening of the fireplace itself, not the full mantle. This gives an even and “correct” visual appeal.

4. Use Paper or Cardboard to Plan Out Art Hanging

If you’re not sure if your artwork is the right size, cut out a piece of cardboard with the same dimensions and hang it up with painter’s tape in your desired space. Afterwards, mark the ideal spot with pencil.

5. Leave At Least 4 Inches Of Margin Space

A crucial principle of visual design when choosing art for living rooms is creating balance by sticking to consistent margins. If your artwork or furniture is separate from each other, the brain will not blend them together. To the untrained eye, it simply looks less busy or messy.

A good rule of thumb is to leave at least 4 inches of margin space between artworks. 

6. Use The Right Hanging Materials for Heavy Artwork

Solid wood or metal frames can be very heavy, and the last thing you want is for your valuable living room art prints to fall!

Learn what you’re drilling into. If you’re drilling into concrete or brick, you’ll need a concrete drill bit and a wall anchor. If you’re drilling into wood, a normal drill bit will suffice, and you should still use an anchor for added safety. Try not to hang on drywall, but if you absolutely must, use a toggle bolt and stick to its weight rating. 

7. Use A Level!

Please use a level when you’re hanging your artwork! This easy and inexpensive tool makes all the difference. Your eyes can deceive you, especially when you’re hanging artwork up close, and constantly shifting your piece back and forth might drive you a little crazy. Use a level for every hanging, both when measuring for the drill holes and when actually hanging it. 

8. Hang A Salon-Style Gallery Wall Correctly

A salon-style gallery wall with many pieces of artwork grouped together can be quite an involved process to create. You can spend a long time obsessing over correctly grouping and positioning art for living rooms.

We have a few tips on how to create the right gallery-style art wall in your living room. 

• Make sure spacing is consistent! An even spacing between each artwork will make the overall feel much neater and more intentional-feeling. 
• Symmetry isn’t always necessary. If you have many different works of different sizes, trying to force symmetry and balance is less natural than embracing the asymmetry and hanging the artwork in a varied cluster. 
• Put the central artwork at eye level. 

9. Consider Leaving Curating, Hanging, & Framing to a Professional

When in doubt, the best decision can be for a professional gallery curator or interior designer to frame your pieces and choose the location of your paintings for you. If you’re worried you’re going to mess it up and you don’t have an eye for design yourself, you may never be satisfied with what you create. In these cases, you may be happier spending the small extra amount hiring a professional to help curate art for your living room. 

Consider reaching out to the professionals at Marcus Ashley Gallery. If you’re in the Lake Tahoe area, we can even take pieces from our gallery to arrange a private showing in your home. This way, you can see for yourself in person how our pieces look in your space. 
For any more questions or to work with one of our art consultants directly on your art selection, don’t hesitate to contact us.

The difference between decorating with regular-sized art and larger artwork is that while the former serves to enhance your space, you can often plan your room around the latter. Large scale original paintings, photographs, sculptures, and fine art prints can easily stand by themselves and serve as the centerpiece of the room.

By the same coin, they can also create unexpected outcomes. Because large scale art tends to have an outsized influence on its surroundings, it’s a good idea to put some thought into the kind of artwork you choose, where you install it, and how you showcase it. If you’re considering buying a large piece of artwork for your space or looking for tips to install it, this blog is an excellent starting point for you.

Installing Large Scale Art: How to DIY

If you’re researching how to install a large scale painting or sculpture by yourself, it’s easy to get inundated with confusing advice as well as overlook some crucial things. Here are some basic tips to get you started on the right foot:

Find the Correct Level

Ensure you find the right height to hang your art before you begin boring holes into your wall. There are some tried and tested metrics you can follow for this. Ideally, your large scale art should be hung so that its midpoint is about 60 inches above the floor. If it’s going to be hung in the bedroom or sitting room, leave 8-10 inches between the bottom of the artwork and the headboard or the back of the sofa. Hang it around six inches above the surface of the mantel — unless you intend to place it on the mantel have it lean against the wall.

Use a measuring tape to determine the right height to place your fixings. Mark off your drill spots with a hard charcoal pencil so that it’s easy to erase. Use a step ladder so that you’re stable throughout the process and to ensure you’ve made your markings correctly. 

Use a Stud Finder

It’s important to understand the structure of your walls when you’re installing large scale art. They may often have water pipes and electricity lines running through them. In modern homes, these are usually channeled around the edges of the walls, but this isn’t always the case for older houses. If you drill in the wrong spot, you might end up puncturing a pipe or nicking an electric cable.

A stud finder is a device that helps you locate the studs in your walls. Studs are heavy wooden beams that serve as a frame for your whole structure and are better equipped to support heavier objects like a large scale painting. 

Pay Attention to Fixings

When hanging any kind of flat artwork, it’s always recommended to use double fixings on either side of the painting, rather than a single, central fixing. This helps prevent your artwork from leaning forward or moving every time someone brushes past.

With large scale art, it’s better to employ slightly bigger fixings than you might think necessary. A couple of screws on a simple plaster wall aren’t likely to support a large painting for very long.

If you’re looking for professional advice to correctly install your new artwork, the art consultants at Marcus Ashley Gallery will be delighted to help you out. 

Decorating with Large Artwork

Large scale art is more than just a painting or a sculpture that happens to be oversized. It’s meant to command a space and be an immersive experience. When you’re displaying it, you’ll want to ensure that there’s harmony between the art and its surroundings, so that it’s an intriguing presence rather than a jarring one. The last thing you want is to splurge on a piece of art and display it in a room with a number of other distractions that take away from the effect of your largest showpiece.

Consider some of these ideas when choosing and displaying your new artwork:

Enhance an Accent Wall

An accent wall is often the perfect backdrop for large scale art. It can elevate the effect of an imposing painting or sculpture and together serve as the star attraction in your home. Depending on how impactful your accent wall is to begin with, you could try adding in a minimalistic canvas with neutral hues and large brushstrokes for a timeless feel. You could also use it as a backdrop for a white marble sculpture, using the contrast to accentuate the artwork.

Over the Fireplace

This is a favored place for most people to hang a large scale painting or photograph. It works quite well since a fireplace is often the focal point of a room, especially a sitting room. It can create interesting conversation among your guests, allowing them to appreciate it together. In fact, it’s a great way to ensure that a stunning piece of art doesn’t go unnoticed. Everything from landscapes to abstract artwork and mixed media originals work well for this setting. You could also try placing it on the mantel and lean against the wall for a more eclectic, laid-back vibe.

Above the Sofa

This is another excellent spot in your living room to hang large scale art. If your sofa is set against a blank stretch of wall, try framing it with a large painting. Choose complementary colors paired with pillows and drapes to retain a uniform aesthetic throughout the space.

Against a Stairwell

Have a long stairwell? Give it some character with a large scale painting. Try adding something with narrative or movement, such as a period piece or a mythological depiction, so that your guests can appreciate it better as they’re moving across it. 

Over the Bed

This is perhaps the ultimate way to indulge your individuality with large scale art. Since not everyone has access to your bedroom, what you display there has special meaning. Don’t hesitate to be bold and expressive in the artwork you put up — perhaps an imposing portrait or photograph or something that’s personally meaningful to you.

Centerpiece for an Open Space

Sculptures and other large scale art creations are the perfect way to add some character and focus to a big empty space, such as a building’s lobby, your home’s foyer, or a massive hallway in your home. It’s an ideal setting to showcase a sizable sculpture, since people have 360° access to it, with plenty of space to move around and admire all the little details the sculptor would want them to notice.

Explore Large Scale Art at Marcus Ashley Gallery

Marcus Ashley Gallery hosts an extensive collection of large-sized artwork from a range of talented artists. Browse through some of their work below and on our website.

Aleksandra Rozenvain

Aleksandra Rozenvain is a contemporary impressionist. She creates stunning cityscapes and landscapes that showcase some of her favorite settings from around the world. Her art is an interesting mix of a very structured technique and experimentation with her medium of work. She lives in Toronto with her husband Michael Rozenvain, also an established artist featured at Marcus Ashley Gallery.

2Wild

2Wild is a collaborative collection from the brother-sister duo of Barak and Miri Rozenvain. Inspired by their rural upbringing, they’re both drawn to natural and wildlife-oriented themes. Much like their parents, Aleksandra and Michael, they too like to combine unconventional mediums in their artwork. However, their experimentation is much bolder and results in stunning mixed-media large scale art that is a joy to decipher and appreciate.

Jon Paul

Jon Paul’s nature photography is breathtaking in its scope and impressive for the technical skill it showcases. He uses a large format photo film camera to capture his panoramic images and blends it with images from a small digital camera to highlight smaller details and nuances. His large scale art photos are available as both aluminum and paper prints.

Mackenzie Thorpe

Mackenzie Thorpe is an internationally renowned artist from Middlesbrough, UK. His work expresses a range of human emotion, often centering on themes of love and friendship, which he considers the most important thing in the world.

He creates both paintings and sculptures. The latter, in particular, are excellent examples of large scale art, sculpted with metals like bronze and stainless steel.

Boris Kramer

Boris Kramer creates exquisite figurative sculptures that are often larger-than-life. He uses mediums like bronze, steel, copper, and brass. Kramer is fascinated by human relationships and his work often showcases human-like figures engaged in exuberant dance routines, always evoking intensity and dynamism. His large scale art sculptures are perfect additions for open private and public spaces.

Learn More with Marcus Ashley Gallery

If you’re keen on decorating with large artwork, reach out to our art consultants today for help in finding the perfect piece for your space. With our gallery, you have access to a number of services, including home previews and private art shows to give you a sense of what your new large scale art might look like in your space. We also offer excellent financing options as well as annual certificates of replacement value for all your artwork.

Mixed media artwork is totally free of restrictions. Any limitation a particular media might have is forfeit when you blend materials to create your own new style. The lack of barriers can be overwhelming for some, but the best mixed media artists utilize the full extent of their creativity to produce utterly ingenious artwork.

Here, we’ll explore why mixed media art is breaking boundaries and the contemporary mixed media artists that are shaping the genre. Learn more from the art connoisseurs at Marcus Ashley Gallery.

A Brief History of Mixed Media Art

The definition of mixed media can simply be “artwork that uses more than one medium,” the concept of which has been around since as long as artwork has been around. As a respected art form in the Western world, however, mixed media became popular around the time of Picasso around the 1910s. 

Picasso would blend previously unheard of materials like canvas, rope, and seemingly random materials such as wallpaper in his work. His peers, including Braque and Matisse, experimented with collage and cubism in new and eccentric ways, blending media in a way that was previously considered gauche or unacceptable.   

The mixed media artist Marcel Duchamp truly took collage to new heights, however, with his innovative and often bizarre collages. He took strange items like newspaper clippings and broken pipes to make artwork that really “stood out” — and even infuriated some fine art connoisseurs at the time.

Mixed media artwork often existed to challenge the very idea of what artwork was to the art world, especially those in high society salons who were still firmly rooted in classical techniques and approaches. Mixed media artwork was one of the big steps towards breaking down boundaries for artwork that existed between the rich and the poor. Its message: “You can make art out of anything.”

Contemporary Mixed Media Artists We Love

At Marcus Ashley Gallery, we’re proud to host work from some of the finest mixed media artists of our time. Mixed media allows artists to push creative boundaries and give two-dimensional works interesting texture and unique 3D elements. 

Below is some of our favorite mixed media artwork on display at our gallery. Make sure you explore more artists at our online exhibition!

2Wild (An Artistic Collaboration of Barak and Miri Rozenvain)

Brother and sister duo Miri and Barak Rozenvain are some of the best known contemporary mixed media artists today, and they do not hold back in their ambitious experimentation and soaring creativity. Both siblings are impressive and accomplished artists in their own right, and together, their art soars to new heights. 

No media is off limits for 2Wild. They use everything from map clippings to glitter to sand in their artwork, all carefully collected from places in which they’ve gathered their inspiration. They also take commissions from clients, and are happy to represent the themes and inspirations that are important to you in their unique style. 

Dave Archer

Dave Archer’s cosmic mixed media artwork is not just superficially fantastic; the scientific approach to his work makes it completely out of this world. 

Archer actually uses a handheld Tesla coil to electrocute a mixture of acrylic resin paint, which produces “cosmic clouds” he then paints over with planets and surreal galactic elements. He manipulates the paints on the back of clear glass with two million volts of electricity, and takes inspiration from real photographs from space telescopes for his imaginary galaxies. 

Archer is a fantastic example of a mixed media artist who uses technology and specialized materials in his craft. He was one of the pioneers of mixing electricity with art as well, with his earliest works first made in the 1970s. His works are truly like no other, and have even been featured in shows like Star Trek!

Rolinda Stotts

Stotts uses a mixture of different types of woods and acrylic to create beautiful natural landscapes and evocative scenes that respect her powerful love of nature. 

What’s fascinating and unique about Stotts’ artwork is that she intentionally breaks and cracks her work. The results evoke images of ancient frescos and decayed wood, adding beautiful layers of texture and tactile depth. Imperfection is beauty to Stotts, and there truly is a deep beauty in her one-of-a-kind mixed media artwork. 

Discover Mixed Media Artists at Marcus Ashley Gallery

At Marcus Ashley Gallery, our passion is representing some of the best artists of history and today. We host fine works from some of the best mixed media artists in the United States and beyond, and we’re delighted to share them with you both online and in person in South Lake Tahoe. 

Our concierge gallery services allow you to collect fine artwork for your own personal collection. We can provide the highest gallery services including custom framing, fully insured international shipping, and certificates of replacement value. Come visit our expansive gallery or consider purchasing artwork for your collection online.