Robert Magda: Coloring Outside the Lines: Surprise in an Artist's Childhood Home

Monday, October 19, 2015

Coloring Outside the Lines: Surprise in an Artist's Childhood Home

shutterstock_244639045_edit Kids drawing on the walls? They could be future artistic geniuses at work.

Glassblowing superstar Dale Chihuly left a giant turquoise painting on the basement floor of his childhood home, and it’s anything but a mess.

The colorful splatters and swirls are clearly the work of an adult: Chihuly visited his mother there for decades after leaving home. Still, artists share a creative exuberance that might spill onto walls and floors at any age.

Chihuly’s floor painting is in the same basement where he once remodeled a rec room using 1950s motifs and Frank Lloyd Wright-inspired drapes. The home in Tacoma, WA is on the market for $379,000 with listing agent Juli Anne Gibson of Keller Williams Puget Sound.

The painting’s tie to childhood is more than chronological, according to art historian, critic and novelist Gayle Clemans.

“Children tend to be gatherers,” she said. “We tend to absorb and collect experiences — what we see or things that we find around us. I have found that artists tend to be particularly adept at retaining that sense of openness, that sense of curiosity, and that ability to take what they’re seeing and feeling in the world and then transforming that into their creative work.”