A home filled with art is more than a collection of objects; it is a living, breathing entity, an ecosystem of energies that shape the experience of living within its walls. True art is not passive. It is not decoration. It is an interaction, an ongoing conversation with your past, present and future self. To live with art is to surround yourself with the echoes of your aspirations and the reflections of your inner world and if done right, it can manifest not only the best possible version of yourself but also the one you aspire to be.
Art is not a luxury but a necessity—an essential tool for living. Francis Bacon’s work made this clear to me as a teenager wading through the existential murk of youth when depression and solitude often felt like permanent states of being. Standing before one of his paintings, I felt understood in a way that nothing else had provided. It was a wordless recognition: someone else had felt this too. At its best, art does that—it disrupts isolation and reminds us that we are not alone. Literature, poetry and painting are not mere distractions but lifelines, capable of opening up forgotten or undiscovered parts of ourselves.
I remember a turning point in my life when I first encountered Rilke’s Archaic Torso of Apollo. The final words of that poem are: For here, no place does not see you. You must change your life—settled into my mind like an irreversible command. Art, when it is real, insists upon change. It pulls at something deep, demanding honesty and courage. A painting, a poem or a sculpture are not inert things; they are forces that shift and shape us if we let them.
This is why choosing the art you live with should never be outsourced. It is an intimate, experiential process that demands honesty that no critic, advisor or interior designer can dictate for you. Art should be chosen not for how it looks on a wall but for how it resonates within you. Where in your life do you wish to have this experience again? That is the only question that matters. The art surrounding you shapes your internal landscape just as much as your external one. In curating your home, you compose a symphony of energies, each piece playing its part in the greater harmony of your existence.
And like all living things, the art in your life must evolve. The works that once spoke to you may no longer hold the same resonance, just as you are not the same person who first stood before them. The ecosystem of your home shifts as you do—shedding what no longer fits, embracing what calls you forward. This is not a burden but a liberation. In choosing art, you also unchoose all that is not you.
It takes courage to choose art honestly—to silence the noise of critics, the weight of self-doubt and the constructed barriers of price and prestige. I regret every work I hesitated to acquire out of fear. Standing in the south of France before the ancient cave drawings, I was reminded of something essential—art is not about galleries, markets or critics. The unbroken thread of human expression, the barbaric yawp across time, connects us to those who came before and those who will come after.
When we are on our deathbeds, it will not be the things we did that we regret but the things we were too afraid to do. That is why it takes courage—not just to buy art but to live with it, surrender to its power and let it change you. Choose art not to impress, not to decorate, but to experience. Choose it for what it awakens in you, for the truths it demands you face. Choose it for the life it calls you to lead, for the self it allows you to become.
Because the art you live with is the art you become.
