Art Is The Give Away
Furniture matters. Comfort matters. Layout matters. The pieces you choose and live with are a big deal.
But art is the giveaway.
It’s the part that tells you who the owner is. What they’re drawn to. What they notice. What mood they want a space to hold. Two people can buy the same sofa, the same rug, the same dining table, and still end up with completely different homes because art is where the personality shows up.
And I’ve believed that forever, because I grew up in a house where art wasn’t the finishing touch. It was the main event.
I grew up with art everywhere, all the time
I grew up with two artists. So, our home was basically a living gallery, except it wasn’t precious or curated for anyone else. It was just normal.
There was art everywhere. No blank walls. Like genuinely none. The walls were made up of art. And it wasn’t one matching series either. It was layered. Pieces my parents made, works by other artists, swaps my mum had done with friends, paintings with stories attached. You’d look at a piece and there’d be a whole history behind it.
And a big part of that world was my dad, Peter Upward.
Peter was a significant Australian painter. Prolific in the 70s. The kind of artist with real presence in the Australian art conversation. He passed away in 1982, but his work didn’t disappear. It stayed.
So when I say I grew up with art everywhere, I mean I grew up in the middle of it. Around artists, around ideas, around the obsession of making something and making it good.
The originals (and why I respect them the most)
And then there’s my mum, Julie Harris.
She’s in her 70s now and she’s still painting. Still exhibiting. Still chasing the work. Still living and breathing it, the way the originals do.
I call them the originals because they’re from that generation of artists I respect the most. The ones who came through when everything felt a bit cooler and a bit wilder. Less cookie cutter. More grit. More risk. More real.
And maybe I feel that so strongly because I grew up watching them. Or because I went to art school and saw the gap between people who like the idea of art, and people who have actually dedicated their entire life to it. Or maybe it’s because I’m nostalgic for a time when creativity wasn’t so packaged and polished.
But mostly, it’s because I’ve watched what it takes.
Decades of showing up. Learning. Getting knocked back. Keeping your own voice. Not chasing trends. Not trying to be for everyone. Just doing the work. Again, and again.
Not many people have the stamina for that. When you meet an artist who has done it for a lifetime and is still doing it, you feel it. They’ve earned their place.
That’s why Julie’s work means so much to me. Not just because she’s, my mum. But because she’s part of that generation. The ones who built their craft when it was raw and brave and then kept going long after the spotlight moved on.
Why art can’t be an afterthought
This is the part I’m trying to explain properly: you can have the most beautiful furniture, the best styling, the right lighting, and the room can still feel a bit anonymous if the walls have nothing to say.
Art gives a space its voice.
And in accommodation, that matters because guests are walking in cold. They’re deciding how they feel within minutes. Art helps set that tone fast.
The tricky part is that art is personal. What I love, my husband may hate. What you love, I might not get. It’s never going to be one size fits all.
Which is why, for stays, I lean toward abstract. It doesn’t tell people what to feel. It invites them to feel it their own way. It gives mood without forcing a storyline.
Why I chose Ego Pop for Sunny Siren
Sunny Siren is light and relaxed, a mid-century gem with all the trimmings. It’s waterfront and hidden in the trees, so it feels like a beachfront treehouse.
But the risk in a beach house is it can slide into two directions:
bland and forgettable, or
beachy theme park, which is my personal nightmare
When I was styling Sunny Siren, I knew the space needed an anchor.
Not more furniture. Not more stuff. Art. Big enough to hold the room and give your eye somewhere to land.
Julie has lots of bodies of work, but the Ego Pop series was the one that hit the mark in this space.
It’s calm, but it still moves. The paint shifts around the canvas like gentle waves. It brings colour without being loud. It adds style and softness without making the room feel busy.
And it solved a very real styling problem too.
We have those beautiful timber walls, and I love them, but brown on mass can start to feel like a lot. The art gave your eye a break from the timber, while still feeling completely right for the house. It balanced the warmth instead of fighting it.
I already had one Ego Pop piece hanging and I loved it in our space, so when Sunny Siren came along, I knew it had to be included. Then I managed to get two more works in the same series, which made it feel even more intentional, without feeling matchy matchy.
Because furniture builds the room.
But art tells you who you are.