When Art Becomes Part of the Architecture

Rebuilding after the Eaton Fire, and designing a new home around a collection that matters

Some of the most compelling interiors do not begin with a completed room and the question, What should we hang here? They begin with the things the people who will live there already love.

Two longtime collectors of my artwork lost their home in the Eaton Fire, along with virtually everything inside it. Among what was lost were seven of my works they had collected over the years.

I don’t think art can replace what has been lost. And certainly a new house cannot simply replace a home filled with years of accumulated life. But I have been deeply moved watching them begin again—and extraordinarily grateful that my work has been invited to become part of that beginning.

Architectural visualization of the collectors’ new home, showing five works by Nathalie Tierce integrated into the interior design.

While their new home is being designed and built, they have been living in a rental. Rather than waiting for the house to be finished, they began collecting again.

One of the works they chose was She’s Over It. After seeing the story and video I had made about the painting, they also acquired Is This Really Happening? For me, there was something particularly poignant about these paintings finding their way to them. Their titles were conceived in entirely different circumstances, of course, but suddenly they seemed to be having another conversation.

The new works went up in their temporary home.

But they were also being considered for something more permanent.

Their architect began incorporating the paintings into interior visualizations for the house being built—not as decoration to be added once the architecture was complete, but as part of the rooms while they were still being imagined.

This is something I think about constantly in my work as an architectural color consultant: the most successful rooms rarely come from treating color, furnishings, artwork and architecture as separate decisions. They work best when those elements are allowed to speak to one another from the beginning.

Scale matters. Sightlines matter. The relationship between a painting and the wall around it matters. So does the way an artwork is experienced from another room, or how its colors interact with wood, upholstery, flooring and natural light.

In this home, the collection is already part of that conversation.

Interior elevation showing five works by Nathalie Tierce incorporated into the planned interior. Four form a grouping on one side of the room divider, while a fifth extends the collection into the adjoining space.

One wall is being planned around a grouping of four similarly scaled mixed-media works. Three are already in the collection; the fourth will eventually be commissioned.

In the meantime, the collectors wanted the fourth frame to be present from the beginning—an intentional absence rather than an empty hole.

Their idea was a ransom note.

So I made one.

The fourth frame will hang alongside the other three, containing a ransom note demanding the arrival of the missing artwork. I won’t reveal the note itself—the collectors won’t see it until it is framed—but I love that this charming, slightly absurd interruption will become part of the installation’s history.

For the moment, the empty space isn’t really empty at all.

It is holding a place for something that hasn’t happened yet.

She’s Over It, 42" x 42", oil pastel on Arches 140 lb. cold-press watercolor paper

As someone who works both as an artist and as a color consultant, I find this project especially meaningful. It illustrates something I often tell clients: a home becomes more personal when we begin with what already has meaning to the people who live there.

A painting, a textile, a piece of furniture, a family object—or even a particular view—can become the starting point for decisions about color, placement, scale and atmosphere.

The goal is not simply to fill a room. It is to create relationships among the things in it.

Is This Really Happening?, 42" x 42", pastel on Arches 140 lb. cold-press watercolor paper

After losing so much, my collectors are not trying to reconstruct every detail of the home they had. They are creating another chapter. There are things from before that remain important, new things entering their lives, and spaces being intentionally left for what is still to come.

I am profoundly grateful to them for allowing my work to accompany them into this new home—and for allowing me to share a glimpse of their rebuilding process.

A home is at its most compelling when the people, the architecture, the color and the things they love are allowed to become part of the same story.