Why Not Decorate your Home with Original Art?
When you decorate your home, you think very carefully about the color schemes you will choose for each room and about matching furnishings and so on. Then you go out and look for something to put on your wall, perhaps as an afterthought. You go around the usual stores and pick a picture that will suit your color scheme and will probably pay as much for it as you would for an original work of art, which will appreciate in value, if you choose wisely.

Painting by Vasiliki Tambouri

Where Do You Buy Original Art Works From?
You could go to a gallery of course, but you could consider visiting some art exhibitions, where you can talk to the artists who are displaying their works and discuss their paintings with them. This gives you an insight into their thoughts as they were creating a painting and you can better understand the creation that you like. Galleries are good, but you have to pay commission and it is so much better for the buyer to buy works direct from the artist.

What You Can Expect From an Exhibition
Recently I had the privilege to be invited to a week-long exhibition of Greek artists’ works and would like to share some of them with you, in order for you to have a flavor of what you can expect for probably less than 1,000 Euros.

Painting by Vasiliki Tambouri, not in the exhibition

There are usually various sizes of paintings to choose from but the bigger the canvas the more they tend to cost. Sometimes an exhibition will have a central theme, but others will be more diverse, with a mixture of styles to choose from. There could be abstracts, or more traditional types of art, including sculptures and icons, if you are interested in religious paintings.

Painting by Spiros Amerikanos

Painting by Spiros Amerikanos

You will, of course, have your color scheme in mind as well as the type of art that appeals to you. I particularly enjoy having artists explain their works as this gives me a deeper understanding of what it is I am seeing in their paintings. I find this particularly fascinating.

Color Scheme First, or Painting?
Personally, I would go to an exhibition first, and find a painting I liked and then build my color scheme around it. A good painting is always a talking point when you have guests to your home. I have found that people are impressed when they see something original on a wall, and if you care about their opinions, they will probably think that you have spent more than you actually did on an original painting.

Once you have found something that you really adore, you can fit your colors around it. You will probably be living with your choice for a few years, so make sure you actually like the painting and can comfortably live with it.

I have illustrated this article with paintings that would typically cost less than a thousand Euros. They were displayed at the fifth exhibition mounted by “Technosfaira” which is a relatively new association of Greek artists. It encompassed various genres of art, and I apologize for not being able to include the works of all the artists who participated in the exhibition. However, I have chosen my favorites, and the rest may be viewed online at the Technosfaira Omada site on Facebook.

Spiros Amerikanos, Vasiliki Tambouri and Vasileios Arapis on October 1st 2012 deciding where the pictures should be placed for the exhibition

It actually makes no difference where you are, there are always exhibitions which feature the works of good artists, so look for these in your local events page online or in your newspaper. Visit an exhibition and I am sure you will be very pleasantly surprised.

{Lynne Evans lived in Pakistan for four years and worked there as an English and social studies coordinator in an English-medium private school. She has written short stories, has a novel awaiting publication, and has also helped to produce text books for students of English. Lynne has also worked as a writer, proofreader and editor for Hillside Press, Athens, Greece and has travelled widely, both for work and for pleasure. She is currently back in Europe and still traveling.}