Think about the skills needed to create a paint color which matches a cat's fur coat. Now think about those needed to transform the appearance of a big city transit hub. That describes the color chops of Architectural Color Consultant, Eve Ashcraft. She came to NYC after attending RISD and with her unique color skills became the creator of Martha Stewart's original paint line as well as the color-guru of Moynihan Train Hall in NYC. Through the decades, her prowess in the field and her client base grew to include esteemed commercial clients and countless residential home owners. Meet Eve and hear about her journey through the world of color.
Amy: Color is the foundation of great design. It can settle a building into its landscape. It can make an unattractive structural detail just disappear, and it can change your mood in a room instantly.
Welcome to Let's Talk Color. I'm Amy Krane, Architectural Color Consultant at Amy Krane Color. I'm a color expert and use color to transform spaces and products from the ordinary to the sublime.
As a paint color specialist, realtor and design writer, I've got my finger on the pulse of what's happening in the world of color. In each episode, I'll reveal best practices for choosing color by introducing you to masters of color for the built world. So throw out those paint chips taped to your walls and let's get started.
When I first learned about the profession of architectural color consulting decades ago, there were two names I knew in the field. One of them was Eve Ashcraft. My knowledge of Eve was rekindled by an article in New York Magazine back around 2012 during my own color training when I was still producing TV commercials.
“The article highlighted the interior color Eve chose for a TV commercial director who had worked at the same company as I. I told Eve there wasn't another color consultant I wanted as a guest on this podcast. She's been working in the world of color for over 30 years with esteemed clients like Martha Stewart, Ralph lauren, the Art Institute of Chicago, as well as architects, interior designers, and countless private residential clients.
Eve says her favorite color is the one that works. Here, here. Welcome Eve.
Eve: Hi. Thanks for asking me to be a part of your podcast.
Amy: I'm excited. Let's start by talking about your career. Your work for Martha and Ralph was pretty early in your career, right? . How did those projects come about?
Eve: Yeah. Actually, people ask me a lot about how I ended up doing something as esoteric as what we do. I didn't really make it happen as so much as it happened to me, and that is because everybody from art school in my era came right to New York and started doing a lot of freelance work to keep my studio going. “And one of the people that I ended up doing a lot of work for was Martha Stewart, and it was sort of early days for her.
And I did all kinds of things, like stenciling on chairs and painting backdrops for photo shoots. And Martha pretty quickly said, you know, you're really good with color. Why don't you help design a paint line for me?”
“And so we ended up doing this thing called the Arcauna Colors that was made by Fine Paints of Europe. And we did a big photo shoot and it was pretty revolutionary because it was only 22 colors. And it took the world by storm.
Nobody knew that was going to happen. Everybody loved that it was, you know, got this Martha stamp of approval and that it was this limited palette. And, you know, that was sort of a light bulb, one of the early light bulb moments for me, because I thought, yeah, people are overwhelmed by having to choose things.”
“So what happened from that was all of a sudden, you know, people found out that I was behind that, working with Martha and people just started saying, hey, you're good with this. Can you come help me? And so it was pretty organic beginning.
And, you know, it was a little overwhelming because it just started, you know, and then I found, oh, you know, this is really an issue. People really, really want help with this. And it was also something that was relatively easy for me because I just sort of see color, you know, it's in my family.”
“And so that was sort of the origin story. And then later I ended up reworking the Ralph lauren paint line. But that was a few years after I was sort of more established.
Amy: Martha's colors, were they in the 80s or the 90s?
Eve: They were in the 90s. The first batch was in the afternoon of the 90s. And then right on the heels of that late 90s, she did a line for Kmart.
And that was fascinating because she said, well, the Araucana colors did really well. Let's make a bigger palette, which was 256 colors. And then she said she was going to do a deal with Sherwin-Williams and Kmart.”
“We were all sort of flabbergasted, like, oh, Kmart, what's that going to be like? But it was actually really great. I mean, she was so revolutionary about bringing, you know, really high design to this mass marketplace.
And, you know, now that's so normal for us. You know, everybody's doing design deals with Target and whatever. But then it was just so radical.
And, you know, it was an amazing opportunity. I mean, I just feel like I was in the right place at the right time.
Amy: Absolutely. That's what I was going to say. You know how many times I've gone on to eBay to try and find, do you know what I'm going to say? ... Those Martha Stewart colors. No one, if they have them, they're not getting rid of them. I want them so badly.”
Eve: “I know I have a cherished, well-worn set, and they're really just for posterity sake, because you really can't get those paints anymore, but who cares, because it's really, they're inspiring. I mean, one of my favorite things was also really hard. Two things I'll say about that.
One thing that was really hard was having all the swatches in my studio and then organizing them for the color sheet, which was kind of radical also. It was this sort of like 24 by 24 folded brochure that had every little swatch tagged on it, but they had to all sort of run in this rhythmic order. And so I actually love doing that.
It was hard because the colors weren't, they had no real typical, you know, rhyme or reason. They were really based on things Martha liked and, you know, all kinds of crazy things. So it wasn't like a paint company going, oh, 10% lighter, 10% bluer. So they were all over the map and we kind of had to make our own color map.”
Amy: “That's interesting. What stands out in my mind, whether true or not, is that it was kind of heavy in that color family I love so much. The blue green and green blues.
Eve: Totally Martha. You know, I mean, it was a very personal color palette, I thought, and she would come to the studio and I'd have all these hand painted swatches, you know, on all these boards all over the studio. And she'd come in and take some down and then she'd laugh.
And she said, I know what you're going to do. And I said, you do know what I'm going to do. As soon as you leave, I'm going to put them back up.
And so we had this very funny back and forth thing. because she could be a little formidable, but once you sort of give her a little pushback. So we got along really well and it was a really fascinating process because she'd say things like, I have this drabware, you know, China that I absolutely love.
“Can you make it into a paint color? Or I have the sweater or literally I have a cat that I think is a beautiful color. I mean, just not so, you know, the Aracana colors generated from a basket of eggs from our kind of chicken.
Amy: Right, right, right.
Eve: That was very personal. It was before her company was corporate, you know, the whole thing had a great kind of creative backbone.
Amy: Funnily enough, my first job out of college was at Crown Publishers. And I was in the production department and a book that was published right when I was there was Entertaining - her first book. So I kind of watched her become something. It was fascinating. It really was. And I worked with her years later when I was a TV commercial producer. We did a commercial with her.
And I'll just say formidable yes.
Eve: Yes. Yeah. You don't want to get on the wrong side of that. People have asked me so much about Martha. I think she's a genius, but she's not the easiest person.
So you really have to, the bar was high, let's put it that way.
Amy: Right. Right. Right.”
“Right. Something I was going to ask you later, but since you brought it up, there you are in your studio, mixing colors to present to her. So when you come up with custom colors, are you mixing in tempera paint or something else that is not common household paint that later gets transcribed into household paint?
How does that work?
Eve: A great question. Because I was so concerned about being able to replicate the colors. You know, I mean, you know this because it's trade talk.
But, you know, the way pigments sit in different kinds of bases, they're, you know, they might feel more reflective, whatever. House paint is a fairly dumb creature. You know, it's not filled with nuance.
And I knew that, you know, OK, so we're going to be using this water borne paint. It's not like fabulous oil paint. So what I did, well, for the Martha project, for sure, is I started with regular house paint.
“And I used universal tinting colors and other kinds of water borne, you know, pigmented things like acrylic paints, things that were not too exotic, so that I was able to make colors that the lab wouldn't have a big problem with. So, and you know, once we had all the sort of swatches that went into our kind of color Bible and Martha approved them, then the next interesting thing was having all that go to Sherwin-Williams or Fine Paints of Europe. Fine Paints of Europe wasn't so hard because it was 22 colors but with Sherwin-Williams it was much more laborious. And so they would, we would just go back and forth with all these shipments. And then eventually I ended up in the lab with them, you know, with their color people, you know, making sure that we all saw the same thing.”
Amy: “I love it.
Eve: At the end of the day, it all boils down to the human eye. You can have all kinds of gadgets and computers and things, but you know, it's really, everybody has to look at it and hopefully see the same thing, you know, does it match or is your version even better than the original, whatever, and so that we could get to the point where we had static formulas.
Amy: Got it. Speaking about your career, how do clients find you now? Obviously, 30 years later, you know, there's a whole echelon of people who know who you are.
From a big project that's commercial to someone who owns a great house in Kennebunkport, how do they find you?
Eve: That's a great question. I had an assistant years ago when she left and she was going off to do something interesting. I said, so do you have anything to say to me?
Like, are there anythings you think I could improve at? And she said, yeah, you're really terrible at self-promotion. So I've been really lucky because I have to agree.
“I'm not great at slinging it. But fortunately for me, I've had, you know, part of it is just being in the game for a long time and getting good recommendations. So most of my work comes from referral, which is lovely, you know.
And, you know, it's just me and I can only do so much work. So that's also a thing. And in fact, I had to, I had to actually create project minimum fees so that I could weed out people because it's hard to, you can't, you can't take everything.
You know, what a glamorous problem to have. And having clients, you know, that's the other thing. It's just having people, because I've been doing this for a while, you know, I'm on their third house or their son's house, or, or I've been working with the Art Institute in Chicago and another project comes up. So it's just also the repetitive thing.
Amy: Got it. Tell me how as a young person straight from Michigan, how did you get a studio in New York as a young person? Who can afford a studio in New York as a young person?”
Eve: “Well, you know, it's interesting. I when I got out, I went to RISD. So I studied painting and I did what everybody did, you know, get out of art school.
And then my dream was always to go right to New York. I didn't really want to go back to the Midwest. There wasn't anything going on there. At that time. And I just wanted to go to New York. So, you know, I did.
I, you know, I had basically zero money. I lived in, you know, the Lower East Side in a little walk up. And I just thought, well, this is great and I'll, I'll do whatever.
I was really lucky because in 1989, I won a National Endowment for the Arts grant for painting. And it was a whopping $5,000. And that was just enough for me to get a studio space downtown in a little, at that point, which is a little loft space on the edge of Soho between Soho and Little Italy.
“And I thought, well, I'll do it, you know, I'll get this space. And then after a year, if I can't figure out how to keep it going, I guess I'll have to get rid of it. But, you know, so I earmarked that money and I meted it out over the year. And it was just enough to do the studio. And that was also around the time that I started doing more freelance stuff with Martha. So I had more steady income and I was able to keep the space and I kept it for 30 years.
Amy: So it's the same space you have now?
Eve: No, actually COVID, you know, like all real estate in New York, my rent went from, you know, like $500 to $9,000 over the course of 30 years. So it was a lot to carry. And I knew for the couple of years before COVID, I thought, oh, the jig is up.
I'm so tired of having to work so hard just to pay the rent. It's a lot, you know. And my studio got bigger.” “I took over space next door. I had this marvelous skylight. And I knew the way the light worked in that space, like the back of my hand.
But then COVID hit and, you know, my partner Heather is a real estate nut. We have this house up in Reinbeck. We went up to Rhinebeck because, like everybody, we thought it will be gone for two weeks. Well, you know, cut to........ And she said, we got to do something. We have to keep working. And she said, I'm going to look for space up here, like just a temporary office. And she found the space that I'm in right now.
And it is just incredible, you know, and it is one tenth of the price of the former studio. So I talked to the landlords in the city and we moved out of that space in June, 2020, in the heat of the lockdown and everything, and got this space here, which has been a total godsend.
Amy: So your're in studio up in Rhinebeck right now.”
Eve: “Yeah. So I kind of moved home base, except for we still have our apartment in the city, which is great because we have a lot of work there, and that's where we travel from. And so, but I moved all the studio operations up here, and it's been great.
And of course, you know, like anybody, creative people, or anybody trying to run a business, it's great when your overhead drops drastically. I had a little more freedom about what I took on as work. And yeah, so that was a big move.
Amy: I know that you worked on product color for a lighting company. How does that work, how does working on products differ? I mean, I know working on the paint was a product, but do you collaborate with sales and marketing people?
How's the process different?
Eve: Yeah, that's a great question. Yes, yes.”
“And I was doing this with a company called Urban Electric Company, and they're based in Charleston, South Carolina, and they're privately owned company, like a family. They have a great ethos in terms of how they develop their products. And it's just a great fit.
I absolutely love them. And their creative director actually is based in London, Michael Lomato. And so Michael would travel here.
We would meet either in Charleston or Rhinebeck or New York City and talk about things from a creative angle. And then yes, marketing and sales were a part of it. But we tried not to let the tail wag the dog.
They're a very creative forward company. And that's a wonderful place for somebody like me, because it's great to not have to be a slave to marketing research about color, which I find really boring. But, and Michael's a great teammate in all this.
“And it's a fascinating process, because it's so different than paint color on walls because of scale and the way that the materials are used. And when you're using sort of shiny paint around a curved small object, it's very different than somebody's living room. But I like it, I like switching up like that.
Amy: Did they give you actually whatever coatings you needed? I don't know if this stuff is powder coated colors or what? What kind of materials are you working with when you're developing the colors?
Eve: Yeah, that's also interesting because I thought a lot about that because it is that shift, you know, like thinking if we're gonna replicate this in house paint, let's try to work in house paint. Well, it's not like I'm gonna set up a powder coating spray shop. So what I did was I actually worked with really saturated flash paint, like saturated waterborne paint.”
“And then I put a sealer over it to see what it would do when it had sheen, you know, because that always affects the color. I mean, I was trying to approximate finishes and that was sort of half successful, half not. And then I started talking to the lab there and saying how are you guys replicating this?
Can you, can I send you some painted swatches that are maybe kind of a satiny finish? And can you send back some samples on metal in the paint that you're working with? And they said, oh yeah, sure.
Amy: Tell us a story about working on a Moynihan Train Hall. For those who don't know, this was the repurposing and redesign of a portion of the main Post Office of Manhattan to become an expansion of Penn Station, the main Commuter Rail Hub in New York. How did you get involved?
Who did you collaborate with? I think I read or heard that the scope of the job expanded once you got started. Tell us about it.
Eve: Completely fascinating.” “I feel so lucky when I get a project like that, because it just opens up. For me, it's like, oh wow, that's a thing. You know, like all of these considerations that go into something that massive.
I remember the first time I went to the site, it was almost like a medieval cave with, it had 2,000 people working inside with full scale, earth moving machines and things. I mean, it was extraordinary, because what they did was they took out the inside of a massive post office. And then it was Skidmore, who was the lead architect and then all kinds of other firms under the umbrella doing different aspects.
David Rockwell was doing the train lounge. I mean, there were just so many people involved. So I was one of legion of people.
And I actually, to tell you the truth, I don't even completely remember how I got involved in that project, because it was like the telephone game. People called, oh, so-and-so recommended you this, that and the other things. The next thing I know, I'm sitting in there with a hard hat on.”
“And I worked on it for about a year and a half. And it went from everything, you know, sort of the initial thing was, what color should the trusses be that held up the whole inside of the building? These big beams of riveted iron, steel columns and trusses were kind of the only vestiges of the old building that had been excavated out.
And they wanted to maintain them. And so this was all about like what color gray, you know, color that you don't even notice, but it was a big thing and we did all kinds of tests and, you know, in this wild construction site. So that was one thing, but then it led into a lot of wayfinding colors because the architect said, oh, well, you know, we're doing this whole wayfinding palette.
Can you put your eyes on it? And I said, sure. And they showed me a couple of versions of what they wanted to do.”
“And this is before they handed it over to this Dutch team. And then we worked with the Dutch team. But the first thing I said is those that all looks like sports teams colors. It can't look like that. It has to be something that stands out from the built fabric. And it, you know, people have to be able to see it.
And so it was great because the Dutch team, they did the Schiphol Airport signage and all kinds of other things all over the world. And so I loved working with them because, you know they said let's talk about the vibrancy of the color and the color that surrounds it and the typeface and what's the distance that you can read it and does it stand out from all the other background noise. So absolutely fascinating color problems to try to solve. So I loved that.”
Amy: I'm surprised Skidmore didn't say, hey, color is part of what we do. It's going to be us.
And then the Dutch company, they didn't say, well, that's exactly what we do. It should be us. So how did you, how did you stay in that project?
Eve: Oh, yes. Yeah, it's really interesting. Some people are so much more proprietary about that thing. And others sort of welcome collaboration. I'm a big collaborator. I I'd get bored if I'm listening to my own head too much.
I really like working with other people. And I have found that, you know, it really is kind of two heads are better than one. Some people will come in and they're all blustery.
And it's like, this is my zone. And I'm like, OK, you have your lane. That's fine.”
“But I found by and large, I think it's just a kind of an attitude, sort of a mutual respect, like, let's figure out ways to make this better. And, you know, especially with architects, they love working with color consultants. And I also think like an architect, which I think helps.
But it's sort of like, well, look, that's what you do. That's your lane. So you're going to spend more time thinking about it than we are. And, you know, in a project like this, where it was okay to have a lot of outside consultants, that also helps. It was really making everybody's job a little bit easier, if that makes sense. So I think I was a pretty welcome addition.
“And of course, for me, I absolutely loved it because I got to work with really interesting people and we did get a chance to work as a team. I think it made everything stronger. And, you know, even though, you know, my issue is color, I often kind of step out of bounds and comment on other things because I see it as all related. You know, it's a pretty holistic world where you can't just only look at color. So just in terms of a design team, you know, that it's the projects are sort of only as good as the team assembled to make them happen.
Amy: Gotcha. Well, actually, that segues into something I was going to ask you later on, but I'll ask it now. You've worked with some or one or a few interior designers.
I have to say that I've been hired by retired interior designers for their own home. I've been hired by clients who are working with an interior designer and they say, "would you work in secret without your name ever being on this? " I say "Absolutely.” “Who cares? I'm here to help you. But I have never been hired on a project to work with an interior designer.
And I would think that obviously color is what you do, but color is so intrinsic to what they do. How in the world do you split up the responsibility to both work on color or them working on the whole palette? Well, how does it work with an interior designer?
Eve: I didn't work with interior designers for a long time, not because I didn't want to, but because of that exact thing. It's sort of like, well they've got that, you know? But over time, you know, in this world of continual specificity and the idea that things just keep getting cut into smaller pieces, you do this and it could be a little tiny thing.
And I have found, especially with younger designers, like one of them is this wonderful woman, Hadley Wiggins, who we did a project together. “We, she came to this client one way and I already had the client. And so it was sort of natural when Alan said, oh, well, Hadley's coming in to do the interiors.
Why don't you guys talk? And we really got along well. And, you know, I've worked with her on all kinds of projects.”
“And the nice thing about it is that, you know, she'll show me a scheme, you know, what she's thinking about in terms of fabrics and window treatments, etc. And then we'll just kind of have a little brainstorming session and say, do you think you want to make the room dark? We could do that.
And, you know, we just have this sort of back and forth. So in a way, I kind of function as like someone to bounce ideas off, but also somebody to bring ideas that they maybe haven't been thinking about. And then some fine tuning.
I find sometimes interiors people can get, you know, they get formulaic because they're busy. And a lot of times I'll say, well, let's shake it up. I know you usually do it this way but I was looking at your work and I saw X, Y, and Z.”
“And so maybe what would you think if we tried this? So it is a collaboration and and one that, you know, tends to be it's like those things. It's really personality.
Like if you get along and you really respect each other and like the ideas that come to the table, who cares, you know, or if it's bristly and somebody has territorial things, it's not going to work. But yeah, I love working with designers and I love working with architects. With Gil Schafer, he has an interiors department in his firm and I've worked with them for 20 years.
Amy: Fantastic. So he's not, he's not from the school of it has to be white.
Eve: No, not at all. But you know, he's a classicist. So he's a little more open to color than somebody who's going to be, you know, completely like a pure modernist who is maybe horrified by color.
I did laugh when you said getting hired by the client behind the designer's back. I absolutely have had that happen. And usually it's because like architects are being all bossy and dictatorial.”
“And I had a very funny client who had been a client before and she hired a very fancy architect to do her apartment terrace expansion next to the Guggenheim. It was a very fabulous apartment. And she said, I cannot, I can't have it all white, but I can't tell him. So can you come in at eight o'clock at night and we'll brainstorm and we'll make secret things and I can have it all painted when he's gone.
Amy: Well, is that what happened?
Eve: And I said, well, I won't tell if you don't. Well, we also have a super duper belief that none of us are going to live in those places. The client lives there. Let's make the client happy.
Amy: Right. Right. Yeah, absolutely.”
“I recently did a country house in the Berkshires for these clients who bought a house. Then soon after they wanted to slightly expand and renovate the house. And at the same time, they had hired an interior designer, local, who had done sort of mood boards to get them started.
Now, when I came on to the project, they were saying things like, we're not getting new furniture. I think expense-wise, it had gone too far. But he had done mood boards for tiles, for wall color, general and specific things. And I got contacted by him saying, it's not working with the architect and us. We'd like to recommend you. We're going to step back.
I was like, okay. I mean, on one hand I thought - great. On the other hand, warning signal!
So they brought me on and we did the colors. It's not finished yet. It's painted, but I mean, they're doing finishing touches. And the architect was very respectful of me. But when it was time to, I think we had chosen the colors already, but there was some kind of walkthrough that was happening. It wasn't painted yet.”
“She was there, I was there. And she said, I'm not going to get in your way because you're doing the colors. But I have a point of view about the colors in more general sense.
And then she went on and described how she wanted three colors, (not which colors, that was me) but three colors in the kitchen, for different walls and the soffits. And the client was whispering, "don't worry, don't worry," to me. And then she left. And they said to me right away, "We're not into that."
And I said, okay. You know, there was one thing she talked about I thought was interesting. Let's go into that space and see if we want to do it, you know, a little bit of what she said.
And we did, we embraced one small thing she said. And that was it. And I thought, this is so strange.
So that was only the second time I worked with an architect. And boy, it goes really differently each time.
Eve: Yeah.” Every job is like a brand new snowflake. You know, there is no template really for how it will go.
But, you know, I have the same experience. I also have that same experience where I get hired sometimes because I'm a bridge or a translator. You know, I get hired because the architects can't work with the client at the color level, or, you know, they're trying to figure out how to make the client happy, but the client has developed some kind of distrust or, you know, something's going on.
And a couple of my friends who are interior designers, they nicknamed me the Client Whisperer, which I always... It's probably just my Midwestern sense of diplomacy, but, and also just kind of an awareness. Color is like a third rail for people.
It makes them go crazy. They can be completely fine with all kinds of other aspects of the project. Then it gets to color and everybody goes nuts.”
“So I already know that can happen. People develop what I call the color emergency. They'll have a meltdown about a ceiling color at two o'clock in the morning.
It's like, whoa, you're spending excellent tens of thousands of dollars, and now all of a sudden you're worried about the powder room color? Just calm down. But color is some kind of trigger.
It's personal. It gets to people in some kind of interior way. It can really derail a project.
It's strange. Sometimes I get brought in at really uncomfortable, weird moments, which people have tried to warn me about before I get there. Like you said, and you're like, okay, that seems normal, but that's like a crazy set of red flags. I think I've been pretty lucky trying to decode these things. But there are plenty of days in my work life where color is the least of it.
Amy: Yeah, politics, diplomacy. Yeah, it's psychological somehow.
How about husband, wife?”
Eve: “Whoa, I worked on a townhouse once where I was like, okay, you two, I'm working with you for the top two floors and you for the bottom two floors. And you can figure it out after that. I mean, they couldn't all be in the same room.
Amy: I'm sad, but it's hysterical. Definitely. Yeah, I interviewed the director of exhibitions at the Clark Institute of Art. And it was so fascinating because we talked about, there was an exhibit last summer about Edvard Munch. I don't know if you saw, it was just incredible.
Eve: I didn't.”
Amy; “And the art was great, but the wall color was really impressive. So she agreed to be interviewed. And it was really fascinating to talk about her process, their process, what's important, what's not, what's your goal with picking those colors and all that.
And I know that you did that really interesting project at the Art Institute of Chicago. You created a little sort of installation, as it were, to hold George Seurat's Pointillist masterpiece, Sunday afternoon at the Grand Jatte. What was your approach to picking the paint color?
And did they have one? Did they give you marching orders? Or was it broad?
Eve: Well, it's interesting. Fortunately for me, I was brought in by the top guy, James Rondo, who is the director of the museum. And it's because I met him at a client's lunch on Long Island, it's one of those things. And so James said, oh, what you do is really fascinating, I'm going to call you. And he did. And he said, well, you come to Chicago and talk to us.”
“The reason I'm saying it was so great to be brought in by James is because a museum - it's like little fiefdoms. There are all these curators and they're really smarty pants people. And a lot of them have been doing it for a long time and they have real ideas of what's going to happen with their special exhibitions or their departments.
And so I really was very aware that I could potentially be stepping on toes. But because James was new at the helm and he had some ideas about kind of refreshing the museum, he didn't tell me what we were going to do. We just kind of walked into a gallery space and he said, this is a jewel in the crown for us.
And of course, who doesn't know that painting? And he said, but it's dying in here and we can't move it from this gallery for all kinds of reasons. So what can we do?
“And this is where I jump out of my lane. The first thing I said to him is, why I think you have to change the frame. I said, I think you have to change the profile of that frame and Barbara, who is another client who referred me to James, she was cracking up later. She said, you really have some stones telling him to do that. But I said, "I couldn't help it because there was no way. We had to be able to bridge from the painting to the color around it and kind of exert a little more control over those things so the painting could be a little more liberated so that you could see it." So the frame was the first thing and then the actual physical way the space was being handled.”
“The next thing I said, I think we have to make an architectural move here where we build out kind of a plinth wall that separates that painting's display space from the rest of the gallery and creates kind of visual hierarchy. It also would allow us to make that plinth wall a slightly different color from the rest of the room, because I felt like depending on what we did, the color that would maybe best support the Seurat might not be so great for the rest of the room. And so my approach was through some of these physical conditions so that I could have a set up that would kind of be a set up that would provide for a more sort of successful outcome for the color that ended up going around that painting.
And one of the interesting things in terms of diplomacy, as I think all along, I knew it was gonna have to be sort of a mid tone neutral because the painting is nothing but a billion specs of color.
“And so I did an exercise because James just really kind of hell bent on this idea initially that the painting would really sing on a bigger, bolder color, like a more chromatic statement. And I was like, oh, well, let's let's do a little exercise where we, you know, make a scale model and we look at, you know, this replica of the painting on different colors.
And of course, what's so cool is every time you put on another color, it triggers some aspect of that painting. Like if you put it on a green, then you see all the greens come to life, or you're very aware of all the reds because of the contrast. And so we went through that, and I did that as an exercise to get past just the verbiage of saying, oh, James, here are the reasons why that's not gonna work.
I thought, well, let's just look at it. You know, I don't wanna just explain away these options. I think we should look at them.
“And, you know, we ended up back at this kind of coolish mid-tone gray that just gets out of the way of the painting.
Amy: But what's the rest of the room? How does that color tie in with the room?
Eve: It's also a gray. There's a tonal shift. I think it's darker behind Seurat and a little bit lighter in the rest of the room, which is just kind of a way to push the space. And I guess I wanted to create a sense of the plinth being just that much more kind of individual.
So it doesn't look like a big move in terms of what happened behind that painting, but it really was a process and it was fascinating.”
Amy: “And you've gone back to do more things there?
Eve: I have. Early this year, I was there working with their graphic design department because they were doing a brand refresh and we got together to discuss the branding color palette and what moves to make there as they refresh their identity.
It was fun. I mean, even just talking about the colors of the walls in the gift shop, just all these things that were always a part of it. So yeah.
And nothing on the docket for what's next there, but I imagine they'll call me back because we have a nice relationship.
Amy: Do you use your own homes to experiment with color? Do you change your homes' colors a lot?
Eve: Yeah, actually. My wife Heather is also in the creative world. We do some interior design projects together actually, but I secretly hate interior design as work because it's too many details.”
“But we do some work together, which is great. And we actually met because of paint color, because she's done tons of design writing. She was the architecture editor years ago at House and Garden.
She did all the travel design writing for Travel and Leisure. So we got together when I was working on my book. And it just so happened that her house in Rhinebeck, I walked into it, I thought, oh, wow, all these colors, they look like the colors in my little paint line.
And we just have a very similar aesthetic. So consequently, and we also love working on our house, which is the house here in Rhinebeck. So it was built in 1850 and it's kind of constantly being repainted in some way, inside and out.
I always feel like the house is like, oh no, here they come again with the brushes.”
Amy: “So I wondered what your company together was and how you split up the work, working together.
Eve: Yeah, we really work as design consultants overall. Like our current project, which is very exciting, is we are working with a couple in Denmark to sort of develop, brand, launch, the whole nine yards, a family art foundation. They own a castle two hours outside of Copenhagen.
It is their family seat. They are really down to earth, fantastic people. And we met them from a project that Heather was working on doing design writing, and it all just led to this crazy kismet.
And so we're committed to this, you know, this sort of creating and launching this foundation. And so we've been going to Denmark for about 10 days every two months.”
Amy: “Wow. Very cool. It sounds amazing.
Eve: Yeah. The next time we go, I'm going to make the color palette for the entire property. It's a campus of about 10 buildings.
And so that'll be really fun, like dealing with the history of the colors on the buildings, sort of figuring out what sort of brand colors for the foundation will be based on. I'll be doing some research in their archives. And yeah, I couldn't be happier. It's really fun.
And it's really fun to be doing that with Heather. We're a great team for something like this.
Amy: The foundation is going to give classes? What will it, what will it do?
Eve: Well, it will be, it's called the Valdemar Foundation for Art and Culture, and it will, it will host exhibitions, primarily visual art in the beginning. It will also host concerts. And our goal is within the next two years also to launch an artist residency program.”
“So we're going to, we're working on that to be able to host artists, you know, maybe 10 to 12 artists every summer who can come and be in the residency. And the foundation will host them and we'll have a primary artist in residence who's more established. So we're working on designing that program.
It kind of can be anything we want it to be. We have a wonderful, long established gallerist in Copenhagen, Suzanne Otteson, who we're working with. And we're forming a kind of a Danish-American friendship program because the couple that we're working with both went to university in the United States and they really have a foot in both places.
They're very international people. They love America. They love the American mindset.”
"And so we are, you know, we're working on to set up a sort of Friends of Valdemar Foundation stateside. So we have our work cut out for us."
Amy: Yeah. Oh, it sounds so exciting.
Eve: It's really exciting. It's very fun. It's a real passion project.
You know, we sort of can't believe that we get to do this. It's wonderful.
Amy: Fantastic. Ok, Color Consulting. Let's talk about it.
Maybe you have your own guidelines and then we break them all the time. You know, so based on the space and the client and all that, do you have a point of view about what you do with interior ceilings when the walls are painted dark? Is there, I mean, obviously, you know, the light in the room, what they're doing in the room, the other colors in the room, blah, blah, blah.
We know all that. Do you start at a certain point or with a certain point of view about it?”
Eve: “Yeah, I would say one thing that I definitely think about ceilings. They're really open for discussion. I mean, I think a lot of people, you know, it's like, oh, it has to be white or some friend of white. And for me, that's not the case at all.
But I'm always looking for some kind of harmonious balance. I mean, I feel like some of the biggest moves I make in a room are things that are undetectable. And in fact, I often think that a successful project is often looks like I was never there.
You know, because it's an envelope, it's the backdrop of a lot of other things that people tend to care more about than the color of the wall. So, you know, I see it as a hierarchy. In terms of ceiling in a dark room, I think, you know, the guideposts for me about that sometimes you just want to go hard and make the whole thing a deep, dark nest that you can hardly see.”
“We have this room in our own house, that's where our television is, and it's like a snog, you know? The walls are this really, they're kind of a cocoa brown color, and the ceiling is like a weird, mauve-y, lavender, gray, Victorian-ish color. And it's a very saturated room, you know.
It's like a dark cave. Your eyes have to adjust in there, and there are all these little lights, you know, dull light sources. And if you go in there, you're probably going to take a nap.
I mean, it's not the kind of room where you go in there to get energized, you know? But it's intentional.
It was all about, like, let's make this little thing that's great to watch a movie in, or maybe take a nap. And everybody loves that room, but it's not a room you'd want to be in 24 hours a day by any stretch of the imagination. So I think, you know, here we go again. “It's like, is there a rule? No, because it's like, how do you use the room? What do you want from it?
And, you know, in a dark room, you know, sometimes you have to balance it by opening it up at the ceiling and making it lighter just so that it doesn't become that kind of cave. I think it's what the end point, the goal is, right?
Amy: Right! And accent walls, a lot of people feel very strongly about them which is so funny. And you're always reading- they're in, they're out, they're in. Oh my God, you want to give me one there? Aren't they out? I think for me, in the right space, for the right reason, they are just wonderful. Whether it's mid-mod and you just want to or there's a freestanding wall.
. It's such a great place to blast some color.”
“But, you know, to that degree, I don't really care about what's in vogue or not trending or whatever.
Eve: You can't. I don't think you can be us and be following that stuff, you know, because it's too limited.
Amy: Yeah. Yeah.
Oh, I think it's funny. People get furious about accent walls. Everybody has an opinion.
Eve: I feel exactly the way you do. I feel like if it's right, great, do it. I don't really, I don't rule out kind of anythingThat's why I always say, you know, people say, what's your favorite color? And I always like, it's the one that works because you can't really say, you know, it's sort of like if you were writing music, you wouldn't say, well, I hate a G flat. I'm never going to use it.
You can't rule anything out because it's just hamstrings, your ability to do a good job. So, you know, yeah, it's accent wall. It's like, yeah, if it's right.”
“I mean, I was somebody invited us over for drinks last night. And of course, it gets to the like, let me show you my house. And of course, we get into one room, which I was just wondering what you thought about.
I was thinking of doing an accent color on this wall. And Heather and I both looked at each other because we know like, oh, here come the design questions. And we were like, well, not that wall, that wall.
You know, both of us said it at the same time. because so much of it is about the architecture. I mean, sometimes people plop a color on a wall and it's like, oh, yes, don't do that.
It just highlights the irregularity of the wall or, yeah, it's so random looking. It's got to be intentional. I think the architecture has to be pretty regular in order to hold it correctly.
I mean, so there are a lot of places where I would just think, no, you know, don't do it. Make the whole room a color or whatever, but don't just, you know, randomly do that because you like the color or whatever. “So I let the architecture be the boss.
Amy: Is there any kind of space that you would like to work on, interior or exterior, that you haven't yet?
Eve: I just thought of something so crazy. I can't tell you how many times I will drive through a, this is going to sound nuts, drive through a small town like Rhinebeck or something, that little main street. In my mind, I repaint all the buildings.
I think it would be really interesting without being like a dictator to be able to work with a little village about creating a harmonious look, without being slavish. I don't mean like every sign has to be in gold. But I often think about that context.
Sometimes you go through a little town, you're like, God, I wish that building wasn't that color, because that whole block would be so pretty if it did this, that or the other thing. So I can't help it. I'm always kind of contextualizing like that.
So I think that could be really a sort of cool project.
Amy: Well, that's a great idea. All right. Last question.
What color white are your walls there in your studio?”
Eve: “Benjamin Moore's super white.
Amy: That's what my kitchen was in the city. That is a clean white.
Eve: It is clean, but it's interesting. It was my old studio color too. It's just so neutral.
It doesn't really go blue. It doesn't go warm, you know.
Amy: I hear you. Yeah.
Eve: And I'm always trying to figure out one thing I miss here. I only have northern light and then the back window, which is the south. And in my old studio, I had Eastern light and then I had this great eight by six foot skylight.
And my work table was on wheels, so I could kind of move it around in this sort of sundial way. So here I've got really these fixed cardinal points, and I'm always working on how to illuminate the space in a way that supports work. But I'm, I just, I really prefer working in natural light above anything.
I don't like artificial light at all. So sometimes I'll actually take a project back to the house so I can see it in different, you know, in different light angles, you know. But yeah, yeah.
“So you know, that's all white intentionally because I need to be able to reflect, you know, to bounce light around in here.
Yeah. And not have another color reflecting on what you're working on. Yeah.
It's the way I learned how not to wear a bright shirt when I was working on site, because you'd hold things, it was like, oh, holy shit, you know, that's the shirt reflecting on my work, you know.
Amy: That's so funny. Years ago, I did an interior in Rhinebeck, actually, and I have a great photographer who is a dear friend from my previous life. He was a location scout.
And so he takes beautiful pictures. And I mean, he moved up here to Hudson in January. But I mean, I used to get him to come up once a year and shoot projects for me.
And we were shooting this Rhinebeck house. And I was wearing a rust colored, really saturated rust colored linen tunic. And he was like, "Amy, stand over there!”
"Are you kidding?"
Eve: That is so funny. What were you thinking?
Amy: And I was like, oh gosh, what was I thinking? I mean, it didn't even cross my mind, but it's a thing.
Eve: Yeah, it is a thing. Heather always laughs, if you open my closet, it's white, gray, blue. You know, it's pretty neutral. It's changed a little bit and then hers is just like screaming color, you know? She doesn't have to stand next to a color deck all day so it makes a difference.
Amy: Yeah, yeah, that's so funny. Eve, thanks so much. This has been really fun.
Eve: Oh yeah, it's been wonderful. You asked great questions. I really appreciate that.
It's fun not to have to repeat myself. Yeah, it's been a joy.
Thank you.”