With walls as his canvas
Every DAY AFTER work, I entered my duplex with eternal hope springing ahead of me. This time, I was sure, I would see the place anew, quit looking at it through dun-colored glasses. I would be inspired to finally hang the art, rip up the hallway runner, replace the Empire daybed with a sofa so grown-ups could actually sit with some grace and dignity and not be constantly swooning backward into the great smother of pillows.
In defense of myself, I had my productive moments, or should I say my caffeinated frenzies of weekend organizing, getting the interiors of drawers just so. On the whole, though, I had a bad case of decorator’s block. Four months after moving in, I was still camping out in my nine rooms, not one of them fit for real living, let alone company.
One evening, just as the light had fallen, I took a walk in my neighborhood, surreptitiously glancing into front windows all along the way. And that’s when it hit me. I saw it in house after house after house, that predictable old wall color -- Standard Issue Landlord Off-White, drearying up every rental on every street I strolled. The same off-white that was ruining the complexion of my own rooms, making the whole place look like a dowdy matron who’d given up, when in fact she was a saucy dame in disguise.
In short order, I called Scott Flax at his studio. Color was what I needed. And when you need color, I doubt there’s a better man to turn to than Scott, an artist and color consultant who takes what he knows about painting and applies it to architecture.
“It all starts with the architecture,” he told me. “How you use color to support it.”
He has worked with some of the best examples of the best architecture in Los Angeles, from 1920s structures, as mine was, to contemporary ones, and on the morning he arrived in his truck at my Spanish-style house, carrying a big bag laden with color samples, he had just finished a major job for the Santa Barbara Museum of Art.
When he begins to work, his method is quiet, intense, measured. He approaches interiors much the way I imagine he approaches paintings -- analytically and perceptively, working with everything he’s learned from his education at the Pratt Institute and the Art Students League of New York, from his 20 years of doing murals and decorative painting, and from his gut instinct for what works and what doesn’t.
He is sure of himself and what he knows, immensely so, but he is “not a didactic colorist,” he assures me. “I don’t come in with a set palette of colors and try to insinuate them onto the room,” and he’s telling the truth. His ego knows when to take a break. He wants to know what you want and what you like before he tells you how he sees it. Slowly, he wanders through each room, stopping, going perfectly still, aiming his focus on the ceiling, the walls, toward the fireplace, right, left, down.
How many rooms are there, how many windows, doors, details, that’s what he always looks for. How high are the ceilings? How does the light play against the wall? How will a particular color interact with that light, with other colors, even with itself? “I begin to think: What does it mean to rake a certain kind of light over this space so that the colors come into their own voice?”
By the end of the consultation, I’m willing to let him make all the choices, so fervently do I trust his taste. And I’m fully convinced, in spite of myself and my anxieties, that I need the best paints on the market to pull this off. Go first class. (Quell that anxiety attack. It’s only money.) Send away for the Donald Kaufman, order the Farrow & Ball, pick up the Martha Stewart. I want my librarian of a house to find her inner flamenco dancer.
And so she did. Weeks later, the dull entry had been dramatized with a red dado. The golden straw tone of the living room bathed the once-dark space in warmth. The blue of the bedroom was so soft it floated. The deep khaki of the round breakfast room enlivened everything in its presence.
At last, I’d broken through my block. That is to say, Scott had. I got out the hammer and nails, yanked the fuggy old carpet from the hall, bought five more pillows for the daybed. I still didn’t buy a sofa. Next time, next paint job. No expense spared. And no regrets.
Barbara King is the editor
of the Home section.
She can be reached at barbara.king@latimes.com.
