Three interiors…

[Stephanie Bower, Seattle] I love sketching interiors, as they are such personal spaces. I love how rooms connect, one space leading to the next or outside, and I love how they are filled with personal objects loaded with meaning that makes a place feel like home. And I don’t even mind sketching the furniture! (which literally may be THE hardest thing to draw!)

Every summer, I teach a workshop in the tiny speck of a town, Civita di Bagnoregio in Italy. This year it was unusually cold and rainy, so one morning I just sat down to sketch the interior of the tiny apartment where I stay. Tile floors, tile ceiling, huge chestnut wood timbers…it has the feel of an Italian farm house, as it sits in the middle of a garden and is appropriately called, Il Giardino.

Below is another interior, this time of my 95 year old father-in-law’s apartment in Pennsylvania. Now 96, he has moved in with my brother-in-law’s family on Long Island,

but he must love this sketch as it is now pinned on his bedroom door.

That’s my father-in-law in the kitchen making bread.

And this is the apartment in The Hague of my aunt and uncle. I love the feel of the room, all the things from Chile where my aunt and mother grew up, and that spectacular view out their window. Feels like home. This sketch is framed and hangs on their wall.

Each space is so different, each reflecting the people and the place, and their roots…