ART & SOUL
Artist Lucy Pratt’s Oxfordshire home is the perfect pared-back space for her colourful and creative paintings
Artist Lucy Pratt’s Oxfordshire home is the perfect pared-back space for her colourful and creative paintings
Amid the honey-coloured houses of the pretty Cotswolds village of Hook Norton, Oxfordshire, artist Lucy Pratt’s converted 1750s barn provides a welcoming home for her, her husband Justin and their son Tom and daughter Zuzu, aged 14 and 11. The family moved to the village two years ago from a Georgian townhouse in nearby Chipping Norton. “We’d done everything we could to our previous home and desperately needed more space,” Lucy explains. “When we saw this property, I instantly loved the whitewashed walls and high ceilings of the sitting room with its network of exposed beams.”
From the front it looks like a small bungalow, but the ironstone brick property is two-storeyed and deceptively large, with the modest entrance opening into a doubleheight barn. This in turn leads through to the kitchen, which looks out over the garden, across a stone-flagged courtyard to distant wooded hills, adding to the sense of being deep in the folds of the Cotswold countryside.
The kitchen is enlivened by bold touches; an oxbloodcoloured floor offsets pale blue cabinets, while a cupboard with a découpage fish design adds to the vibrant, artistic feel. This was bought on a weekend in Brighton, where it had been displaying linen in a shop window. “I badgered them until they let me buy it!” Lucy recalls. Above this, a collection of china bowls and mugs with bird, feather and figurative egg designs fills the open shelves and introduces a decorative element. The plastered rough-stone walls provide the perfect backdrop to Lucy’s playful paintings, which have been described as resembling those from the British faux-naïf school. The ground floor includes the studio where she paints and her art can be seen throughout the house, along with work by friends and family.
“I describe this as an ‘in and out’ house,” Lucy says. “For example, olive trees can be seen just outside the sitting room windows, and beyond there’s a collection of walnut trees. I have repeated the leaf pattern inside in the
vibrant yellow, large palm-print linen curtains and in a smaller scale on the blinds,” she explains. In turn, the mustard and green check fabric on the wingback chair and olive green paint chosen for the Lloyd Loom wicker chair mirror the verdant hues of the extensive garden.
Many of the pieces around the house have resonance, as they were collected from Lucy’s travels in her twenties around India, Nepal, Thailand and Sumatra. “I brought back whatever I could fit into my rucksack at the time,” she says, such as the ‘wonky and old’ sculpture of the cow from India, which now has a home on a kitchen shelf. Gold-coloured sacking fabric from Botswana was made into cushions, adding interest to a throw from Rajasthan that covers the patched-up sofa. All of these touches give the house an eclectic air and reflect her passion for travel.
Lucy is also inspired by places she has been visiting for more than 20 years and, where she has painted and exhibited her work, such as the Lizard Peninsula and Helford River areas of Cornwall and Salcombe in Devon. “Cornwall is geographically reflected in the artwork I have on the walls around the house. It’s a theme that
runs through the shapes, colours and materials in my home, such as the abstract rug in the hallway, which was inspired by the sea, pink flowers and grey rocks of the county.” It was designed by Lucy as a one-off piece for London rug designer Christopher Farr. Among numerous seascapes painted on canvas and driftwood found on beaches, she has a circular painting of the Cornish village of Cadgwith framed with rope from a fishing boat: “I used it to create a porthole-style picture frame and it adds a nautical accent to the house.”
At the heart of everything is a contemporary Scandinavian woodburner. It provides a cosy, warm area for the family to gather together in the large sitting room on a cold day. “It feels like an alpine home in the winter, with the children sitting round in the glow playing the guitar, drawing or knitting, or doing something creative,” Lucy says.
Modern wooden and glass doors section off a snug area where the children watch television. Beside this a staircase leads upstairs to a mezzanine level, which serves as a guest bedroom. Here, a Rajasthani throw sits alongside Cath Kidston cottage-style embroidered bedlinen, a bedside lampshade painted by Lucy with a sheep-train (“to send the children to sleep”) and an ochre-coloured folding screen. Every corner of this inspiring home reflects her colourful artistic vision.
To see Lucy’s paintings, visit lucypratt.com.
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