Photos by Laurie Mustard / Winnipeg Free Press
This confederation plaque was rescued and cleaned up and is now ready for framing.
Nothing makes cabin fever worse than a cold bare wall.
Especially if it’s a drab colour. And especially if that cold bare wall and its drab colour have been that way for years.
The great thing about walls is, along with keeping the cold out and the heat in, we can use colour, coverings, and decorative stuff, especially pictures, to create the kind of environment our brain needs to help keep us happy.
If you’re looking at something for hours every day, it’s much better if what you see makes you feel good.
Personally, I feel colour is a huge catalyst in determining attitude. If the walls around you are bright and cheerful, or perhaps a warm and cozy earth colour, or even a neutral but pleasant tone, definitely helps determine the mood with which you view them, and your life at present.
If the walls surrounding you bring an interrogation room to mind — chances are they aren’t going to cheer you up much.
For me, what I put on the walls is equally as important to the colour, or covering, or texture.
Pretty much anything is more interesting than a bare wall, except for maybe some of those old black velvet paintings. Although, credit due, there was occasionally some truly fine art to be found in some of those paintings. You just didn’t buy that level out of the back of a van in a Safeway parking lot.
However, I’m just about to frame and hang a very wall worthy artifact I’ve had sitting around for years, acquired who knows where, which of late I’ve been stepping over on the garage floor. Some of you may remember the old copper plaques celebrating the 60th anniversary of confederation, the years 1867 to 1927. They adorned many of the older school walls if I remember correctly.
As with so much stuff we have around, I just took it for granted and stopped seeing it. Then, at some point last summer it got splattered with car polish which hardened and stuck to it, and it looked awful.
Earlier this week for some reason it caught my eye. Guilt won, so I brought it in and gave it a big time scrub with a good stiff brush and a good lather of Gojo Natural Orange Pumice hand cleaner. I removed the polish and oxidization to the desired degree and brought it up beautifully. Now I just have to find it a good frame.
Definitely interesting to look at.
And being the animal lover I am, I have many beautiful animal faces looking back at me from my walls. They can be great company.
There’s no need to wake up lonely when you’ve got a great big picture of a happy golden retriever gracing the wall at the end of your bed. You might even want to keep a sponge ball under your pillow to throw just for the heck of it.
Art does not have to be expensive. One of my favourite wall faces belongs to an Idaho cougar painted by renowned wildlife artist Phil Prentice, a print mounted on a hard backboard I think was picked up at a thrift store. I do remember it was surprisingly inexpensive. LOVE looking at this face every day.
Whatever form of art triggers your interest or emotions in a positive way is worth sharing your home sweet home with.
Speaking of which, writing today’s column has reminded me I have to get a picture of Grandma and Grandpa Mustard, who I never met, radically enlarged and mounted, then frame it with the barn board I wisely saved pre-demolition of their old farm buildings, that Grandpa Mustard built.
That’s as wall worthy as it gets. Have fun with your walls.
Comments or feedback are always welcome!
lmustard1948@gmail.com
