STYLE : INTERIORS : Dream Scheme

I’m letting my imagination run wild,” says artist Edwardo Vargas, who, when he isn’t painting, sculpting or designing costumes and jewelry, is busy turning his 1933 Silver Lake cottage into a colorful and exuberant fantasy. Vargas calls the house “a cool, calm refuge for me and my friends,” but for the last 10 years, the energy level has surged as he’s moved through it with chisel and brush, transforming one room at a time.

The excitement begins in the leafy front patio. A Moorish-style door opens into a little turret. Splashes of blues and greens are accented by niches lined with gold leaf, an overture to the larger rooms beyond. The living room has a hipped vault and windows on three sides. Vargas has created new openings and niches in the walls, outlining each with a riot of hand-painted foliage. Eucalyptus branches, pinned to the ceiling, and outsized bouquets of fresh flowers, tied to the branches, seem to have floated in from the luxuriant garden. Doves, finches and nightingales sing out from an outdoor aviary.

Steps lead up to the dining room and another cylindrical turret that serves as a breakfast nook. Flames streak across a painted sky, and playful cherubs peek out from behind puffy clouds. Shell-shaped plaster sculpture frames the serving hatch from the kitchen, where original tiles are juxtaposed with new steel-and-glass shelves and a three-dimensional stained-glass window colors the view of misty hills.

“I don’t sketch--I discover what I want by doing it. What matters is that it’s happy, sensual and sparkling,” Vargas says, adding that his plans for the upstairs bedroom and downstairs studio are still taking shape. Inspiration comes from trips to what he calls “small, uncomplicated places” in Mexico and South America. He brings these places home in his head, to re-create just a few miles from downtown Los Angeles the spirit of a baroque chapel or jungle village.