House beautiful
Travel experiences provide inspiration for home’s interior design.
my house beauti ful A Brian Batsch painting is like an abstract collage of the memories shared by he and his wife, Sharron.
Not just in depictions of gods and totems drawn from their travels to Europe, Africa, India and the Far East. But also in the experiences and meaning drawn from a discovery-led life.
Brian’s four-metre-wide painting in the couple’s living room is a layered volume of personal history as fantasy. The eye travels left to right, into foreground and background, but needs time — hours, certainly — to grasp the image’s elegant chaos.
The painting is symbolic of the couple’s design esthetic, as well. Their west-end home and its elaborate backyard garden eschew pop design’s clean lines and sterile vacancy for more of that elegant chaos.
The couple’s formal dining room, with its Cabernet-coloured walls, is visual art made manifest. The eye travels up, down and all around to discover big objects with fine details or small details with large meaning.
Like the tropical fish painted by Brian on a small panel just above the floor line. Or the coffered ceiling with one of Brian’s paintings situated Sistine-like above the dining table.
Brian used a drywall lift to install that painting. He and Sharron are largely DIY folk and are continually adding art, paint or detail to the home.
Instead of hunting on their travels for a perfect piece to complement or finish a room, they go at it the other way around.
If they find something they love, they ship it back and add it to the mix.
In lesser hands, this might end up as anarchy or clutter. But Brian and Sharron are hardly hoarders. He is an artist, after all, and her education was in math.
Their west-end home is 2,600 square feet, with three bedrooms and four bathrooms. In the downstairs bathroom a potential shower stall was converted into an exhibit space for one of Brian’s works, a tree sculpture.
The main floor also includes Brian’s studio — which the couple calls “the pit” — as well as more displays of Brian’s art.
The second storey hosts the bedrooms and Sharron’s home office. And more of Brian’s art.
The open ceiling of the home’s front entryway provides considerable wall space for Brian’s work, which runs the gamut from almost Group of Seven-like landscapes to vibrant popart photo-realism.
The meaning to be drawn from his works? Brian shrugs. Sharron says he doesn’t talk about his art much and it is up to her to boast about her husband’s talent, which can be seen at brianbatsch.com.
Brian, after teaching fine art for a few years, entered the insurance and financialservice industry, where he’s worked for 35 years. Sharron runs a software-development company specializing in products for the non-profit sector.
Both say this apparent contradiction in themselves — logic and creativity — actually makes sense. Composition in art can be logical and mathematical.
Logical, eh? They dated for less than two weeks before deciding to marry.
The couple has one son, Brice, and two grandchildren. On top of work, family and their home projects, they are both heavily involved in volunteer work in the community. Brian is also an avid golfer.
At this time of year, they are regularly in the backyard, which is more of that elegant chaos, rendered in wood, stone, flowers and shrubs.
The backyard retreat includes three fountains, wandering footpaths, weeping caraganas, metal sculptures and about five distinct seating areas.
The couple work constantly on the garden in spring and summer, yet describe it as a kind of spiritual retreat.
Mind you, the house is kind of fantastical, too, with all the cherished pieces from afar, including rhinos, devils, dragons, Hindu gods and Egyptian deities.
Brian says the couple never visits the same place twice on their travels. They prefer the sense of discovery with new places — an ethic, again, reflected in their home, with its pleasing hurly-burly.
While the decor may be a bit “over the top,” say the couple, visitors “seem to like it.”
More important is how it makes them feel. Their house evokes a sense of home resonating with past journeys and current endeavours, as well as artistic creation.
Which all seems, in the end, rather logical.