space and surface works

textured wall with skim coat and mesh tape

before and after, main wall

wall and window

Last week I repaired and repainted the walls in our first floor sitting room.  The main wall is lit with a raking southern light and this caused the sandy, grooved texture to leap out insistently.  I ended up building a scraping tool to knock off the peaks, then skim coated and sanded the walls towards a relative smoothness.  We chose a color of green that had a bit of life to it.  It quiets down in the natural light, but maintains some intensity in artificial or reflected light.  The photos above show both scenarios.

I suspect that most people think of walls as surfaces, but I like to treat them as spaces.   Walls, like paintings, are best understood by their edges.  The center is a more mysterious space with a disorienting habit of falling away– especially when color gets involved.   I love that center, where a wall can act like a window.