6 prints I love for your living room

Following my post from quite a while ago about print for the hallway and stairs, I wanted to look at what you can do in your living room.

Living rooms are a great place to have a large and bold print, something that you can stand back from and admire, and have the space to make a statement.
You can work with your overall colour palette, choose something to contrast, or let the print colours influence and introduce touches of colour through soft furnishings in the room.

Here are some of my favourite new pieces from printmakers I like.

First of all, Jardin de Suzanne by Clare Curtis. 

Made in collaboration with the V&A, Clare has pushed herself with this print. I love her work, but here she has created a great palette that works brilliantly. She's a master of light and dark, which is something I'm still learning. 

I love how she uses the dark reddy grey to make everything pop and another grey behind that to bring shade to colours; it's very inventive. 

Clare is also extremely good at composition. There are so many different elements, but your eye is lead around the print, and everything fills the space wonderfully.

I feel that this print would form the focal point of a room and become a talking point for all that view it.

 

Folded Forest are two printmakers, Ruth and Sarah, based in West Yorkshire. The print I'd like to share is Leaping Hare, and I love how they make these two-tone prints. Printing onto both white paper and darker coloured paper, their prints are striking and work brilliantly, using dark and light to lead you into their printed world.

They create beautiful scenes that feel like you see the secret world in which the animal inhabits. Looking into their underground nests and burrows while they sleep, or the freedom of running around above ground.

These prints would work well in any room because of the two-tone composition, with the black and white elements plus either the printed colour or the paper's base colour.

James Bywood makes fabulous screen prints from his pen drawings. I am lucky enough to own one! What's special about his work is how he chooses vibrant and often clashing colours to bring his prints to life.

He draws landscapes with drama using bold ink marks and large areas of black and colour. 

As I've said, they are striking, and I think they would fit well in any living-room. Having one would bring the windswept nature of the countryside into your home.

I have a soft spot for The Little Friends Of Printmaking. They are wonderful printmakers, JW & Melissa Buchanan, based in the USA, who seem to work tirelessly printing these very characterful prints for bargain prices. 

I love their prints' style and think they would go very well in a modern, bright living room, especially if you can match your walls to one of the print's zingy colours. They would bring a smile to anyone's face!

Owen Findley, or OR8 Design, is a master of minimalism and negative space. Like me, he is inspired by the great outdoors, but in a very different way; my houses are on the coast, Owen's nestle in amongst hills and mountains with sweeping roads.

His prints would work well in a minimalist space, and as many of his prints are narrow, they work well in combination across a wall, forming an overview, rather than just one view into nature.

I particularly like this print Northern Lights with its brilliant colour gradient in the sky and dark silhouette of trees framing the house.

Finally, a print very different from the others. A printmaking collective, Underway Studio in Brixton creates these stark yet textural prints showing brutalist architecture with massive areas of colour. 

I love this print Brutal Forms V ; it works brilliantly with halftone detail offset by the bold use of colour. 

This print and their work would look brilliant in any modern home or any room with a clear and strong colour scheme.

I hope that some of the prints I've chosen can inspire you. Maybe to think about the prints that you could add to your living space, or perhaps if you are having a re-think about your space's decoration and layout, you could be led by a new print.