Decorative painting on a wood and tiled fireplace

 I hadn't seen this fireplace before the painters applied white paint to the panels so don't know what it originally looked like. With the architect and the client, we decided to use the color of the lovely dark red tiles at the bottom and the ochre yellow ones.

 I used artists oil paint for the panels. The luminosity of the patina doesn't show in my photos which is too bad as the panels glow a bit.

I then realized that the tiles were stained with dark brown wood varnish so scrubbed them with acetone. I also retouched the wood and bamboo bits with a little brown paint to mask the nicks.

False Marble Fireplace

 After doing false stone and false bricks, I'm now doing false marble on the same job in the enormous town house in a very wealthy district in Paris.

As the original false marble was not very nice and rather damaged, the architect advised me to re-do it entirely and the lovely client told me to do what I thought would be best. (so cool!)

I sanded and primed it in off white. I put an ochre patina on the inner part thinking it would look good with the parquet floor. Then I did a softish pink fantasy marble. It was a bit of a whim but why not?

False Stone Work / Fausse Pierre

This entranceway had an elevator installed and doors moved. There was a lot of plaster rebuilding. The client wanted to keep  the old false stone work so I was asked to do the same thing on the new parts and also fix up any damaged areas.

Here I am using an old ruler to paint in the joints.

And a thin wooden strip which is the classic tool to rule in mortar.

False Bricks

I put makeup on the facade of this Normandy style house situated in the courtyard of a private mansion (town house) in Paris. The masons, after installing some pipes, patched up the hole. The dark red patches were left from former workers although why they bothered coloring the concrete is baffling. The guys I spoke to asked me if they should also tint their cement but really, a gray patch doesn't seem any more offensive than the dark red ones.

Anyway, these panels are made up of false bricks. I just had to repaint them and redo the joints. I filled in the brick color than painted in the mortar the following day with a ruler and a bevel brush using a whitish/gray/ slightly pink color. All in acrylics and permanent. Just call me fast and furious!

False Marble Repairs

Repairing imitation marble walls in a friend's apartment.

Plastering cracks, priming then patching an existing decor with oil paint. Work I hadn't done in a while but luckily and surprisingly, the hand doesn't forget. Check out my palette and groovy brush which looks homemade but is store bought.

oxidated bronze finish

This decoration was done in the outside entranceway of a Parisian residence. The hall had been repainted before winter. I finally got to do the job last month when the weather became mild enough. I had proposed a number of finishes; terracotta, plaster or oxidated bronze (vert-de-gris) which was chosen. It's not always easy for residents to agree on a finish (considering that even within a couple, a common decision is difficult). It's not always easy working on a ladder, arms in the air and hearing comments from every resident in the building...



I enjoyed working on sculptures instead of flat walls and since finishing this job, I see oxidated bronze sculptures everywhere in Paris!


Cette décoration a été réalisée dans un hall d’entrée. J’ai attendu la fin de l’hiver pour l’effectuer car c’était quand même dehors. J’ai proposé plusieurs imitations sur les chapiteaux, les têtes et les cabochons: fausse terre cuite, faux bronze ou imitation vert-de-gris. Ce n’était pas évident pour les membres de la copropriété de se mettre d’accord mais ils ont choisi le vert-de-gris. (D’ailleurs, c’est souvent très difficile pour un couple de s’entendre sur une décoration.) Dur, dur de travailler les bras en l’air sur un escabeau et d’entendre toutes les critiques sur le travail. Un exercice de modestie ne peu pas faire de mal! Et de toute façon, le but est que le client soit content, c’est juste un peu plus compliqué quand ils sont plusieurs.
J’ai rehaussé les rinceaux à main levée pour les mettre en valeur. J’ai rajusté plus que prévu pour plaire et voilà, ils sont contents !
J’ai bien aimé peindre sur des surfaces en relief et depuis que j’ai fini ce décor, je vois des sculptures de bronze oxydé partout !

'Japanese Paper' patina

I did this patina in a living room. The wainscots and moldings were done in a very lively raspberry/red ochre color. The walls were painted beige. The client wanted to decorate the walls with Japanese paper but I talked her into a patina inspired by natural-fibered paper instead. Using yellow ochre and light brown on a large, flat brush, I lightly dragged the brush along the painted ground in parallel strokes creating a motif my client called ‘gentle rain’. The repeated gesture of the pattern was in itself a Zen-like experience, very Japanese.




My lovely client also installed one of my Vanity paintings (article La Sacra Conversazione) in her bedroom.

J’ai effectué cette patine dans un salon. J’ai fait les cimaises et moulures dans un coloris framboise/ocre. J’ai peint les murs beiges. La cliente voulait coller du papier japonais au-dessus des cimaises mais je l’ai déconseillé. Inspirée par les fibres naturelles du papier, j’ai fait un décor en tirant avec de l’ocre jaune et du marron clair des lignes parallèles mais irréguliers avec un spalter. Ma cliente était ravie de sa ‘pluie douce‘! Moi, je trouvais que ce geste répété était déjà très zen, très japonais.
Mon adorable cliente a aussi installé une de mes toiles de la série Vanité (voir article : La Sacre Conversazione) dans sa chambre.

A Silver Frieze

I’ve just decorated a small white water closet. The clients had the tiles changed on the floor so I suggested instead of repainting the room white, I’d use a blue from the tiles on the bottom part of the walls and paint the upper part of the walls and the ceiling gray. Then on the gray, I’d put a silver frieze. We started thinking about decors from the 1930’s. I at first thought I’d do an abstract motif but as the floor is decorated with small blue tiles in a somewhat playful manner, it was hard to find a Modern Art Style geometric design that went with it. Everything I looked at was too strict and not suitable for stencil designs. I came about these roses in a book and really liked them.


I spent a long time drawing them for the stencil then spent a long time cutting it out. Applying the stencil itself was a cinch. I did it in blue. However I then had to repaint the entire frieze by hand in a silver powder mixed with varnish mixture which made it permanent. (I had originally wanted to do the frieze in silver leaf but realized that there would be too many steps involved i.e., doing the blue frieze, filling it in with special varnish for leafing, applying the silver leaf, then re-varnishing the silver as it’s not stable. Way to labor intensive and expensive.)



I used a small brush and covered over the blue with the homemade silver paint. Even though the blue is very bright, the décor is sober (gray on gray) and clean.

Je viens de décorer des toilettes. Les clients ont fait changé le carrelage. Au lieu de le peindre en blanc, je les ai suggéré une fausse cimaise avec du bleu de carrelage en bas et un gris neutre en haut (plafond inclus). L’idée était d’appliquer une frise argentée sur le gris.
Comme thème de frise, les décors des années 30 étaient dans l’air. J’ai débord voulu dessiner un motif abstrait mais comme le carrelage était déjà abstrait mais léger, j’ai eu du mal à trouver un dessin géométrique Art Moderne. Ils étaient tous trop rigide. J’ai craqué pour les roses.
J’ai passé du temps à les dessiner pour le pochoir, puis j’ai passé du temps à les découper. En revanche, l’application du pochoir était d’une rapidité folle. Je l’ai fait en bleu puis j’ai mélangé une peinture maison avec de la poudre d’argent et du vernis. J’ai rappliqué ce mélange à la main sur le bleu. (Au départ, je voulais faire la frise aux feuilles d’argent mais je me suis rendu compte que c’était trop laborieux et onéreux.)
La résultat, gris sur gris est sobre et clean comme mes clients.

Painted cupboards

This was a small job to brighten up a narrow hallway full of closets. Most of the house is painted white with gray trim. The one variation in the house is red ocher stucco used to highlight certain walls. I choose this color for some 'punch', and four muted colors. I wanted the other colors pale without being pastel, keeping in mind the limited width of the corridor.

Voici un petit chantier au but d’égayer un couloir étroit et fermé, rempli de placards. Sauf quelques pans de stuc d’ocre rouge, cette vaste maison est entièrement blanche avec de plinthes grises. J’ai choisi cette couleur ocre pour sa vivacité plus quatre couleurs neutres. Je les ai voulu pales sans être pastels vu l’espace limitée.