Art, sculpture and inspired colour palettes turn a home into the story of a life
Vanessa Branson lives in a mews house set back from a cobbled street. At one end is an old synagogue, at the other a Greek Orthodox cathedral, and beyond the little courtyard is a home that, as soon as you enter, feels like the most comfortable art gallery in the world. For all its rickety glamour, this house is significantly smaller than Branson’s previous home, a large townhouse in west London. “I have four kids who were all living with me with their partners, and then I had a friend who moved in for a long weekend and stayed for 32 years – there were 10 of us in the house,” she says, merrily adding that selling it was the only way to get them all to leave.
While her brother Richard was launching Virgin Records, in 1986 Branson opened a small contemporary art gallery in London’s Portobello Road. She was 23, and it was a time, she says, when art meant “sporting prints” for collectors’ walls. “It was quite a risky thing to do to buy something contemporary, but I realised that by buying a young artist’s work you’re encouraging them to push on. I didn’t have much cash, but I started to buy works myself, and it’s been a fabulous part of my life.”
Continue reading...* This article was originally published here
* This article was originally published here
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