art and stairs...

Of all places, one of the biggest design elements of our house will be the stairwell.  If you cannot tell from the blog photos, there is a lot of wall leading to the second floor of the house.  We knew that even choosing the perfect color, it would still need something spectacular to bring the stairwell to life.   

We decided to commission a local Dallas artist (gallery is actually located in Oak Cliff...) to help add a wow factor to the expansive area. 

If you don't know Daniel Padilla's work, you should get to know it!  His whole family is artistic - Daniel and his brother and sister all have their art displayed all over the world, but you can also stop by and see it in person at the Padilla Gallery located on Davis, right by a great chocolate shop called Coco Andre.

Anyway, after he visited the house right after the drywall stage, he measured the space and developed a plan which we thought was going to be great.  Some time had passed and Daniel asked to visit a second time because he needed to see the space again because he said that he had thought of an even better idea which would take up more space on the wall and create an even more dramatic impact. 

Daniel finished the painting a couple of weeks ago and we cannot wait for him to deliver and install it in our new house.  He called it Beautiful World...and even though the two photos I captured on my phone are not the finished work, you can definitely see that it is quite beautiful!

The pieces will be hung on each of the three walls going up the stairs to the second floor.  The medium is hard art board and there are varying depths from 1" to 3" which will really have a great effect at night from the shadows cast by the lights.  In total there are 16 pieces - each piece is 8 ft tall.

 

These are not the finished pieces and were laid out on the floor of his gallery - he has since finished them by adding a shiny glaze which really brings out the colors.   

This was a very massive undertaking and we could not be more proud of the result - Daniel has told us that he will require about two hours to install these.  Let's just hope that he can maneuver a ladder much more gracefully than me!