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A giant white bust of The King sits on the asymmetrically placed fireplace mantel. “We got him on our honeymoon in California,” Blair Martin says. “We bought him on the Venice Beach pier, and he has been with us in every one of our homes. Elvis has never left the building.”
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Blair found the turquoise bead-encrusted steer skull in a shop near Georgia O’Keeffe’s Abiquiú Home and Studio Museum in New Mexico.
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Blair found the citrus green cabinets at IKEA. The backsplash tile, which she installed sideways, is from Home Depot. The waterfall island is quartz.
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Blair drew the design for the wall cabinet and had it fabricated by their contractor. The painting was done by an acquaintance in Key West.
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In their previous home, the Martins used their now-vintage iron-and-wood Restoration Hardware table in the dining room. Here it anchors the breakfast nook.
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The Martins’ contractor hand-crafted the feature wall with wood lathe, installing it piece by piece and finishing it with a sealer. Blair found the orange-and-red coverlet in India.
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The desk was a prop for a play that Blair found when working with a North Carolina theater company. The mustard-painted cabinet was an import. “It’s sort of a cross between Swiss German and early American painting to me,” she says, “not what I would be typically drawn to. It was the color and size.”
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On a vintage manicure table with great curves is a selection of Blair’s resin paperweights — containing oddities such as tarantulas and crabs — and a Sputnik-like pen holder that originally held cigarettes. The little resin pin cushion reminds her of an object her mother used to have.
Every time Blair Martin and her husband, Bill, have moved into a new house, Blair vows that this will be the time she makes it what she describes as a “grownup house.” And every time they have found themselves moving into houses in Florida, North Carolina and a few in Richmond, the same thing happens.
“I decide that this time I am going to be a minimalist and everything is going to be all white,” she says, “but it never works out. I just can’t do it. It makes me miserable.” The artist and former creative director for Richmond’s Burford Advertising agency simply loves color. And from the red orange front door of the Reeds Landing house they purchased in 2013 to just about every square inch of the interior spaces that stretch over three levels, her passion for bright colors is impossible to miss.
“I love the energy of color. It makes me feel good,” she explains. “There is no way I could live in an all-white or gray house.”
The artist says that every house has been a new canvas. The couple’s current house, surrounded by woods on a lot at the base of a hill, presented a unique challenge for her. “I have to have light, and this is a very dark lot because of all the woods. It was very cave-like and depressing,” she says. “I knew what I wanted to do before we moved in.”
The Martins’ first order of business was opening the early-1980s house up to let in as much light as possible. A bank of windows at the back of the main living area was expanded to offer full outdoor views for the entire level, including the kitchen. Two skylights were also added. Carpeting and dark floors were replaced with blond maple floors throughout, with the exception of the foyer and kitchen areas and in bathrooms, where they installed varying hues of black and gray natural slate tiles.
A bank of leaded glass panels with floral designs that the previous owners hung in framed openings between the living room and a walkway from the foyer to the kitchen were removed and replaced with screen panels. Finally, walls were painted white to allow the Martins’ extensive collection of Haitian and Latin American primitive art and Blair’s own brightly colored paintings to shine.
Layers of bright oranges, yellows, reds and what Bill has dubbed “Blair Martin Green,” a citrus green, that ebb and flow throughout the house, appearing in art, textiles and kitchen cabinetry, explode against white walls in a riot of color. Bill was a co-founder and creative principal of Barber Martin Agency, a Richmond advertising firm, and he loves Blair’s eye for design. Blair explains her decorating style as being one with her art. “I really don’t know the names of colors. I just like them and want them everywhere. Colors are a reflection of the art, and art is a reflection of colors.”
Experiential colors inform the public and private spaces in the Martins’ home, but it’s the stories behind unique art collections and objects that capture Blair’s imagination and earn them space in the creative couple’s environs. “Everything in this house is something we collected somewhere,” she says. “The stories are what are important to me. I know where everything came from, what we were doing and why we were doing it. Stories are my thing in my painting, as well as everything else.”
Case in point: “Rat Bot.” Sculpted by Reginald “Ripp” Smith, a friend from Asheville, North Carolina, the unusual creature rests in between conversation areas in the living room. Made of thin layers of plywood pressed together and then carved, the sculpture is one of three of Smith’s works in the Martins’ house. “And it’s only the top half of the ‘Rat Bot.’ When we bought it, we couldn’t afford the bottom half,” she says, laughing.
Using the same pressed plywood technique, Smith also created a sculptural base for the Martins’ dining room table. A twisted mass of what turns out to be appendages ends in animal paws and human hands and feet carved to a miraculous, even height to support the glass top. “It really is absolutely incredible that he was able to make them all come to an even height,” Bill says.
Tied together with art, colors and stories on the inside, the pale gray exterior belies such lively spaces, with one exception: the front doors. Painted Blair’s favorite shade of red orange, that faced opposition from the Reeds Landing homeowners association when the Martins sought approval for the paint color.
“They told us they would only allow Williamsburg colors,” Blair recalls. “I can’t tell you how many colors we went through trying to convince them to let me paint what I wanted. Finally, I just told them that the red orange was a Williamsburg color and they said yes. I think they were just sick and tired of me. Of course, I would’ve done it anyway.”
