Tips For Decorating Art Studio Furniture, Gets Creative

The artists used to starve in sparsely furnished, drafty garrets (attics), or so we are taught in art history. Today’s artist, thank goodness, has better sense. While they may think with the right side of their brains most of the time, these creative geniuses aren’t so wrapped up in their work that they fail to appreciate the need for some basic comforts. Instead of damp, dowdy garrets, many of the artists I know live in fashionable lofts or townhouses filled with trendy, upscale art studio furniture  that makes living and/or working in their studio, quite stylish and comfortable.

From easels to paint palettes to pottery wheels, some of the basics haven’t changed. Other more modern things have simply joined the ranks of the “basics” of the artist’s trade. Those could include but aren’t limited to: the computer, the scanner, the printer, a projection screen and a few dozen other technical marvels. Housing these basics is what makes furnishing an artist’s home or studio different from decorating a regular person’s house.

The sorts of furnishings used to fill an artist’s studio today can be as simple as a good drawing/drafting table with a comfortable chair and a lamp, to a complex set of modular cabinets and countertops that can be attached at different angles to provide spaces for everything from cutting matt board to scanning images into the computer. Some of the more high-tech art studio furniture can look as if it would be more at home on the space shuttle than in an artsy loft.

While it might seem romantic to starve in a garret, I’d much prefer to think of my portrait being painted in a comfortable studio with great northern light and lots of comfortable, useful furnishings that enable the lucky artist to keep his or her mind on their work.