LIVING COLOR

“TRACT HOUSES ARE very dramatic and theatrical,” says interior designer Gregory Evans with hardly a trace of irony. “With their 5-inch-thick walls, they are just like a set.” Evans, who spent the early ‘80s assisting David Hockney on stage sets for the Metropolitan Opera, should know. In 1988, he began work on the decidedly uninspired home of an old friend, Dagny Corcoran. Together, he and Corcoran transformed her two-story ‘50s tract house in Bel Air, which he describes as “a lot of doors, windows and walls,” into a dramatic space marked by lightning bolts of color.

“Gregory was my inspiration,” says Corcoran, who owns Art Catalogues, a bookstore specializing in exhibition catalogues. “He has an incredible sensibility.” Of course, she adds good-naturedly, “We argued over everything.” Evans agrees. “We see colors differently. We call them different names. I call the library ‘Venetian yellow’; she calls it ‘pumpkin.’ I call the living room ‘bubble gum’; she calls it ‘Pee Wee Herman went to Jamaica.’ After a while, I’d just show her a color chip and ask, ‘Do you like this color?’ avoiding the name altogether.”

Obviously, Evans is not afraid of strong colors. “Working with David taught me not to be intimidated by them,” he says. The living room--painted while Corcoran was away in Europe (“She never would have agreed if she’d been here”)--with its pink walls, green beams and cobalt ceiling, is a case in point. Evans decides on colors by sitting in a room and contemplating how he would like to feel there. “I create a picture in my mind’s eye,” he says. “I judge a painting not by the images alone but by the images I feel.”

But most people, Evans observes, are afraid to use bright colors because “it’s easier to paint everything white.” Corcoran, too, had painted her home all white, but by the time she had begun working with Evans, she had grown tired of the house’s gallery-like appearance. “I came to the conclusion that an all-white room is much more aggressive, believe it or not, than a room painted in strong colors,” she says. “White is so reflective. When the sun came streaming through my windows, the walls were so bright they hurt my eyes.”

Strong colors absorb light, creating an intimate feeling. Corcoran became convinced when her mother, who had rolled her eyes and laughed at her first glimpse of the brightly painted home, sat in the living room awhile and pronounced, “You know, it’s very cozy in here.”

But can artwork compete with a riotous interior? Of course, says Corcoran, pointing to a Nicholas Wilder geometric canvas that holds its own with the bright-pink living-room wall. “Color doesn’t scare good paintings.”