Interior designer Max Humphrey has spent the last 10 years designing homes all around the country. Originally based in Los Angeles, Humphrey relocated to Portland this year. With his focus on creating interesting and unpretentious spaces that reflect the people that
live and work in them, we asked Humphrey how he helps client with hanging, placing and choosing art in their homes.
“I love helping clients pick out artwork for their home. Art is really personal and should be a fun thing to collect. Some of my clients really like pieces that are personal to them and their family. That could mean framed vintage travel posters of places they’ve been, paintings by local artists or art bought when traveling. Some clients don’t focus on relevance and just want pieces they respond to aesthetically or emotionally.”
MAX HUMPHREY INTERIOR DESIGN | PHOTO BY KIYA GIBBONS
6 Tips for Covering Your Walls with Art
1. Go slow
Take your time and don’t over think it. If you respond to something and its in your budget, go for it , even if you don’t
have a spot for it yet.
2. Go with your gut
Don’t over curate, it’s about a gut reaction and that’s it.
3. Mix it up
Mix different mediums together in the same room or even on the same wall, which means paintings mixed with framed
prints mixed with mixed mediums —like collage or even 3D pieces—so it looks like the collection came together over time
and wasn’t bought all at once from the same store or gallery.
4. Spread the focus
The gallery wall makes individual pieces seem less precious and more a part of a collection, which makes everything more
approachable and less serious, even if it’s fine art.
5. Don’t go by room
Don’t match art to the color palette of a room. You need freedom for art to move around the home.
6. Stay original
Buy at least one or two pieces that are one-of-a-kind and not editions or available at a retail level.
About the paintings in the top image: (clockwise from left): Sarah Fagan » blackfish.com “Woods” acrylic on panel, 28”x18” “In a
blend of painterly strokes and trompe l’oeil, I elevate the status of everyday objects. I aim to orchestrate compositions that
both reveal the beauty of a struck match and allow the viewer to enter a world beyond the object.”
Chris Foster » jpepinartgallery.com “Candid Extractions” Encaustic and oil on wood panel, 48”x60”. “This is one of my
latest works, inspired from new forms of physical and aesthetic exploration.
Dianne Kornberg » prographicadrawings.com “Porphyra” gelatin silver print, 20”x30”. “In these pigment prints, the
physicality of the ink on paper closely mimics thinly pressed algae specimens, and the photographic prints take on
attributes of graphic media such as watercolor or pastel.
Ellen Goldschmidt » blackfish.com “Evil Twins” (portrait of Ammon Bundy and Ted Bundy), mixed media on paper and
panel, 23”x23” “The whys of this project are personal and philosophical, and they come down to the same thing: my belief
that feeling is too often subordinated in life and in art. I’m interested in reasserting balance by privileging emotion in my work.”
