Our dining room has been a work in progress, as we love the lighting inside the brightest room of our apartment, but we’ve yet to strike the balance between decorated, yet retaining a sense of uncluttered comfort. As Emily and I love the coast and beach, yet find ourselves living miles inland, we had decided to decorate the dining room in a coastal theme which would remind us of all our favourite memories combing the shoreline, exploring tide pools, and watching the sun disappear into the ocean.
Our latest addition came by way of our wonderful neighbor, who hosted a yard sale yesterday morning and gifted us one of her vintage midcentury paintings to add to our dining room. During the era, artists (more like graphic artists) churned out countless paintings like this for mass consumption by a public once ravenously hungry for this type of abstracted imagery. They’re admittedly considered a little kitschy today, but I think these images also ring true in capturing an era of California midcentury aesthetic which still permeates strongly in decor today, from San Diego up to the Bay Area, much in the same way Cape Cod decor on the other side of the nation still lives on.
It’s interesting to note how just one piece of art can transform a whole room, but this warm hued gem makes the space more inviting and balances out some of the more somber-darker pieces gracing our walls (not to mention we switched out the flooring from a light blue to a more dramatic dark blue rug and I finally found a piece at the Long Beach Antique Fair to fill in an empty corner). Now to find a few modern elements to rein in the amount of vintage pieces…
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