BRIGHT SIDE OF LIFE
Intense pigments and abstract shapes are the hallmarks of Swedish-born artist Liselotte Watkins’ style, both in her work and in her elegantly vibrant Rome apartment.
For Swedish-born artist and illustrator Liselotte Watkins, life imitates art and art imitates life. In the apartment she shares in Rome with her husband, fashion communications director Jonas Falk, their young children, Wim and Ava, and the family dachshund, Hundis, the mood is a mixture of streamlined elegance and playful vibrance — just like her boldly abstract, hand-painted, one-of-a-kind ceramics. For more than 20 years, Watkins’ black-and-white drawings of wide-eyed, generously lipped gamine girls, splashed here and there with colour, and more recently, her 1970s-style collages in paint or paper of abstract bodies and faces, have made her the go-to girl for brands like Prada (two of her illustrated patchwork faces were used for the house’s handbag collection last season), Diptyque and Marimekko. This same sense of Pop Art meets high style resonates through Watkins’ early 20th-century apartment, where she and her family have lived since moving to the city three years ago from Milan. They needed to do little to the space, apart from painting walls and woodwork all white and pouring new concrete floors in the bathroom and kitchen. Among Watkins’ favourite features are the amazing Roman tiled floors which act, she says, “almost like a rug”. Here, Watkins’ vintage furniture, ceramics and art resonate with energy and colour. Many are pieces she’s collected since the early days of her career as an illustrator in New York, post-art college in Texas (where she had also spent the last year of high school on exchange). Her big break came when she was asked to design weekly beauty ads for Barneys New York in The New York Times’ Style section. Among elegant Scandi pieces, from vintage Bruno Mathsson chairs and couches by Danish designer Borge Mogensen to richly patterned cushions in Svenskt Tenn fabrics by celebrated Austrian architect Josef Frank, there are unusual finds, too, like a heavy, industrial-looking wrought iron bed found on Italian eBay for less than €100 (its headboard serendipitously marked with a big ‘J’, her husband’s first initial). “I never buy anything expensive,” she laughs. “I’m very Scandinavian in the way I like functional pieces that won’t be a burden. If something breaks, it doesn’t matter.” Classic designs with twists of colour, like a modern Flos lamp in bold red or a vintage desk with a bright-orange top always catch her eye when trawling local markets, a regular Sunday morning ritual for as long as she can remember, wherever she is in the world. She’s also drawn to organic shapes and textures “with an emphasis on wood, natural linens and wool. It harks back to my Scandinavian roots, immersed in nature”. The sociability of Roman life suits Watkins. “I like the way everything here is open; children and neighbours come and go. Nothing is a big deal.” The city also fuels her boundless creativity. “We live near the Villa Borghese, an area which is calm and quiet,” she says. “I don’t feel the craziness of life here — it’s given me the opportunity to not always being just go, go, go.” She admits she gets bored easily, though — “so I always have little projects to keep me inspired. I appreciate the headspace Rome has given me to try new things”. Even the apartment itself inspires her creative process. “Before I get going in the morning, I walk around the apartment making little still lifes. I like to look at them and move them around. It helps to trigger certain emotions.” Dotted on shelves and consoles, there are busts, masks and portraits (she bought the two hanging above her bed because they reminded her of Wim and Ava). “I’m always drawn to faces and bodies, perhaps because they are a recurring theme in my own work,” she muses. For Salone del Mobile in 2016, Watkins translated this love into a unique style of bold non-figurative patterns painted across a collection of upcycled vases, carafes and bottles, entitled the Collage Series, which debuted at JJ Martin’s LaDoubleJ store in Milan. “I kept finding old vessels in great shapes at markets but they looked so sad, I had to take them home,” she says. Working out of her apartment, Watkins handpaints each one with an array of geometric shapes in bright pops of colour, reminiscent of similar works by Picasso and Matisse. Her next project will be a limited-edition collection of handmade vases for the Tuscan-based ceramic specialist Bitossi. What Watkins strives for, whether in her life or work, is a balance of harmony and beauty that she says isn’t possible without “a little disharmony and ugliness to steer things away from being too beautiful. Pure beauty is so not interesting, in any way”. Visit
“I’m very Scandinavian in the way I like functional pieces that won’t be a burden. If something breaks, it doesn’t matter.”