"Making Myself at Home" Original Artwork by Sandra Gale

What it holds

Four very different vases have made themselves at home against a creamy tiled background, each bringing their own fabulous patterns and personality.

There's a big pink vase covered in strawberries and little white flowers, a green vase decorated with bright pink and orange blooms, and a tall cobalt-blue vase filled with geometric patterns.

And then there's the golden yellow vase, with its painted coastal landscape and a pink cockatoo perched on a branch, looking perfectly content with her corner of the world.

Big flowers reach up across the tiles, while a wavy ochre border and gorgeous turquoise background hold all those colours and patterns together.

I imagine this artwork as someone who's reached that lovely stage of life where they know who they are and they're happy being themselves. They don't need to be the loudest person in the room, but they're not making themselves smaller to keep anybody else comfortable either.

They've made themselves right at home, thank you very much!

Story & inspiration

Making Myself at Home is an evolution of my earlier artwork Taking Up Space, which sold at the Melbourne Affordable Art Fair.

I wanted to keep exploring those big, bold vases bursting with flowers, bringing together some of my favourite colours, shapes and patterns.

Working at this scale is always a challenge for me. Collage is much easier when you're working with smaller pieces of paper, and those big painted sheets can get a bit tricky to handle and position once the glue comes out!

But I had so much fun playing with all the different flower shapes and sizes, keeping the colours connected while giving each vase its own personality.

And then I had the idea to add strawberries!

I loved anything strawberry when I was a kid, and I love how these ones turned out.

The tabletop is a mixture of paint and ink, with subtle shifts in those earthy brown colours. Behind the vases, I've included a tiled background inspired by the handmade Spanish tiles I love seeing in interiors.

I'm constantly inspired by beautiful ceramics, interesting rooms and the patterns people surround themselves with. These are the kinds of fabulous vases I wish I had in my own home!

Where it lives best

At just over a metre square when framed, Making Myself at Home would look fabulous above a sofa in a family room, or on a dining room wall where everyone gathers.

It's got that lovely combination of being a big, colourful statement piece while also having lots of tiny details to discover. The strawberries, flower patterns, little cockatoo and painted textures give people plenty to look at when they're sitting around chatting.

I can also imagine it in a professional reception area or medical waiting room, somewhere a little colour and an interesting artwork might give people something enjoyable to focus on while they're waiting.

It's a piece with plenty of personality, especially for a home where colour, creativity and individuality are already part of everyday life.