Style Insider: An art-loving woman and her bijou apartment.
Space may be limited but Frances Walsh always has room for art
Frances Walsh was once told that Westminster Court, the inner-city Auckland apartment block where she lives, used to be accommodation for divorced women. “I loved the idea of fast women living cheek by jowl,” she laughs. With its wonderfully traditional shared facilities, the bijou one-bedroom 1930s home reminds her of being on a cruise liner. “Something about it makes me feel so serene,” says the in-house writer and researcher for the New Zealand Maritime Museum.
She also loves its handiness to everything. “I came from Wellington and always lived around the city so I feel discombobulated in the ’burbs,” she says. Even though it’s small, the high ceilings, westerly sun and the view over a lush neighbouring garden means she never feels trapped.
Moving in early last year however required her to be “extraordinarily, efficiently ruthless” with her possessions. Only truly loved objects and artefacts survived to become the heroes of her tiny residential gallery. Some are sentimental. Some are alive with memories of people and places.
“When you travel a lot for sustained periods of time, you can’t take a lot of stuff with you. So you learn to be more spartan and to examine your possessions more.”
A deep window seat in the living area is not just a great place to lie in the sun but contains much needed storage.
After repainting the walls in a cool sea green and putting sisal on the floor, Frances added built-in furniture to integrate the space structurally and allow the artworks to shine – every piece of art has a narrative that Frances recounts with affection as if she is personally acquainted with the artist, and she often is.
A small work by her friend Sara McIntyre is set in the King Country. “I love that it is a domestic female scene of a washing line
with a sublime background of pink undies and a shearer’s shirt.” Another by the same artist is a homage to Frances Hodgkins. The writer and artist Greg O’Brien gave her a piece in the hallway that he had collaborated on with John Pule.
A friend who visited the Chapelle du Rosaire de Vence near Nice in France gave her the little Matisse prints of the chapel, based on the artist’s mural along the walls in black paint on white tiles.
A library shelf at one end of the living room is stacked with books and curiosities. Crammed in at the top, an off-kilter yarn vase knitted by Finn Ferrier is a favourite.
Frances has a penchant for delicate wood engravings. There are several by Thomas Berwick, an 18th century wood engraver in the North of England who revolutionised wood cuts and was also a nature writer.
When she was teaching in Cambridge, England, Frances visited the Berwick studio in Northumberland which still does print runs of some special engravings and she fell in love with these works. She also has a Modernist scene from around Cambridge by English engraver Gwen Raverat.
The limited space in Frances’ apartment means she operates on a strict one-in-one-out policy and asks, do I really need these in my life? But it’s hard to imagine any of these carefully chosen, much-loved pieces ever being shown the door.
‘He was one of those amazing obsessives who painted forest workers’