Visiting Artist Homes and Spaces While Traveling
I just returned a few days ago from my summer travels. For the last four years, I’ve taken a solo trip annually, usually for the entire month of August. This time, I stretched it to six weeks across two continents, four countries, and more than five cities—Ghana, England, Denmark, and France.
At first, it felt like my usual solo travel itinerary: good local food, mornings in cafes, reading, bookstores, museums, flea markets, people-watching, shopping, a cooking class, or a group tour here and there.
But on a whim, on a gray day in England, I found myself lying in my hotel room in Brighton (aptly called the Artist Residency).
The weather was rainy and windy, too much so to go to the beach I could see from my window. I had paid extra for the sea view… but alas, England. So I stayed in bed, reading and scrolling through Substack.
A newsletter I follow on Substack, Beyond Bloomsbury, resurfaced an essay on painter Vanessa Bell.
Learning she was from England, I went down a rabbit hole and discovered an exhibition of her work in Lewes, along with her home in nearby Charleston, Firle. By the end of the afternoon, I had booked a train to Lewes.
One thing to know about how I solo travel: I keep a very loose itinerary. I often book hotels day by day - sometimes only one night ahead, sometimes not knowing where I’ll sleep until dinner time. This allows me to say yes to spontaneous things like Lewes on a whim.
This post begins a series on Visiting Artist Homes and Spaces.
Over the course of my travels, I stepped into several: Vanessa Bell’s home in Firle, Finn Juhl’s house in Copenhagen, the Parisian streets and spaces of James Baldwin and Richard Wright, Claude Monet’s gardens in Giverny, writer Victor Hugo’s apartment in Paris, and Suzanne Valadon’s studio in Montmartre. Each will get its own reflection in the weeks ahead.
And so I begin here, with Vanessa Bell’s home in Firle, England.
Art and Home of Vanessa Bell in Lewes and Firle, England
I decided to spend time with Bell’s artwork first at the exhibit in Lewes before going to her home in Firle.
Vanessa Bell (1879–1961) was a painter and designer, and the sister of Virginia Woolf. She was part of the Bloomsbury Group, a circle of artists and writers who pushed back on the Victorian conventions of their time. Bell’s art was bold and loose, often post-impressionist in style.
Most of her work was being exhibited at a museum in Lewes, England. The town itself let me see England in a different light. Prior to the visit, I had been in London and Brighton, which both feel very different from Lewes. Lewes had the charm of a period drama backdrop with cobbled streets and old stone houses. It was quiet, cozy, and down to earth. And it had the best tea and pastries, as small towns and non-touristy places often do.
After seeing Bell’s art and learning more about her, her commitment to housing and creating a gathering, safe place for her queer artist friends, painting profusely in her own way, holding literary salons, designing curtains, textiles and illustrating her sister Virginia Woolf’s books, I made a quick side quest to see a castle a local told me was in town.
After the castle tour, I took a cab about 30 minutes from Lewes to Firle to visit Bell’s home. The road there felt like the edge of town: greenery, trees, and a dusty yet quaint path leading to a house set apart from the rest.
In 1916, Vanessa moved to this house with the painter Duncan Grant.
When you arrive, the home is on the right side and the left side has an outdoor and indoor cafe and a gift shop designed to complement the old house. The home was built in the 16th century, but it is not a mansion. Bell wanted to move away from the stuffy Victorian houses she grew up in. This home had more of a farmhouse feel.
The self- directed tour starts in the kitchen, where you immediately get a chance to be acquainted with the charm of the space. The charm comes from Bell’s painting on the cabinets, the light fixtures, and her pottery and plates she both made and painted.
This desire to make her home an extension of her art continues throughout the house. There is not a single room that escaped her brush. Her bathtub, headboards, fireplace, closets, doors, walls, bookcases, all got Bell-ed.
How she painted is what makes the space feel alive. Bell was a classically trained artist, even tutored by John Singer Sargent, but her style here is loose, whimsical, and colorful. She ignored proportion and rules, favoring freehand designs that feel playful.
The home also feels like Bell chose to live with things she genuinely loved and found aligned with her way of being rather than whatever happened to be in style at the moment.
A visit to Bell’s home will heal you from FOMO on being current and trendy. Her design choices have no dated feel at all. In fact, her style has endured over time, which makes the home feel like art itself.
Her Studio
The wow moment for me was her art studio, which she designed herself. The ceilings are higher than in the rest of the house, with windows that flood the space with light.
There is a sitting area, shelves of art books and artwork made by her friends. Bell was a champion of her friends’ work and her contemporaries. She didn’t seem to pine for the work of dead artists but for living ones, people who came to her salons or visited her home. A reminder for me to be a collector of works of my time.
Her studio also has a cozy fireplace, its mantel cluttered with shells, rocks, sketches, vases, and knickknacks, objects that might have found their way into her still life paintings. The studio felt like the kind of space every artist longs for: cozy, light-filled, spacious, alive, and impossible to step into without wanting to paint.
The Garden
The garden at Bell’s home is a classic English country garden. It feels abundant but not overly planned with apple trees, roses, lavender, and wildflowers. There’s a small pond and climbing vines trail across the sides of the house. It’s a garden that makes you want to sit on the grass, sketch, picnic and daydream.
My Meaning Making of this Visit
So what meanings am I making from my time in Vanessa Bell’s space? I have several. The first is the practice of haven-building. Not just creating a home, but a haven where others can come into your space, see their art on your walls, and experience what it looks like to live fully as yourself. Walking through Bell’s home surfaced that for me.
It also surfaced how much I am drawn to loose, childlike art. Three weeks before stepping into Bell’s home in Firle, I had been in our family home in Ghana while thereI had felt the pull to curate our home with my art and local artwork. Looking back now, it feels like a kind of foreshadowing, or one of those coincidences that only makes sense later.
From the balcony in our home Ghana, I painted what I had been observing: the fruits we were eating, the chicken from the backyard, the red bird that kept visiting the front yard, the palm and banana trees within sight, and a woman with long hair—which was me, as I had long braids while in Ghana. The artwork was loose, colorful and playful and along the line of Bell’s work.
The last meaning-making came from observing myself as the only Black person in the middle of Firle, England, visiting the home of an artist who is not widely known in the outskirts of town.
I prefer not to be “the only” in spaces; however, when I am, I feel proud of myself for seeking out my interests, following my curiosity, and creating my own unique memories. Of course, there are the occasional long stares, the quick double-takes that remind me I stand out. But in those moments, I remind myself that I belong wherever my curiosity takes me. That curiosity is also part of my identity and deserves to exist and wander without hesitation or explanation.
After leaving England, I went to Copenhagen. My visit to Bell’s home had me wondering what other artist homes might be nearby. Finn Juhl’s house came up in my search and caught my interest, so, following my own nose, I decided to visit. More on how I experienced that space in my next newsletter.