Find Art That Reflects Your City

When UGallery was participating in New York’s Affordable Art Fair one year, a young man spotted an oil painting by UGallery artist Jonelle Summerfield of a New York City intersection that looked familiar to him. “Wow—that’s my girlfriend’s building!” he said. He purchased the painting, titled “Sunny Day in Greenwich Village,” and gave it to his girlfriend as a gift. “It’s common,” says UGallery Art Advisor Samantha Greene, “for city dwellers to desire one-of-a-kind metropolitan pieces by artists like Summerfield.” “People who live in cities relish the energy of their city,” she says, noting that Summerfield’s cityscapes are popular at New York art fairs. “Part of that is being immersed in the culture, and people tend to look for art that reflects those experiences.”

Imagine the Artwork in Your Apartment

Most people who live in cities don’t have a lot of extra space, so smaller art usually works best for home decor. Before choosing pieces for your apartment, take note of the size of the walls and the amount of open space for wall art.

To visualize your ideas, we recommend either cutting out a piece of butcher paper in the size that you’re interested in, or using painter’s tape to outline the shape of a piece of wall art. The UGallery website allows you to filter artwork by size, so you can easily browse pieces that fit your measurements, peruse the work of many different artists and then choose the art that jumps out at you.

Greene also finds that when choosing art, people living in cities often consider the entertaining that they’ll do. “They like to give their guests a little art tour,” she says. “They enjoy telling stories about the art and the artists.”

Commission Artwork That Fits Your Space

UGallery client Elyse once asked us for tips on sizing artwork to be displayed above the couch in her living room. Gallery Director Alex Farkas superimposed images of the UGallery paintings that she liked best onto photos of her space, so that she could visualize the actual art there.Because her favorite pieces weren’t quite the right size for the spot, we advised her that a custom piece would work best. After commissioning artist Melissa Gannon, Elyse received a 30” by 66” triptych titled “Autumn Mingle.” The triptych consisted of three framed watercolor and acrylic ink paintings on paper that featured birds among vibrant fall leaves.

Use Small Spaces to Create a Gallery Wall

Seattle-based UGallery client Adrian admired the work of UGallery artist Janine Etherington, but he didn’t have a lot of wall space in his small apartment to work with. Purchasing five 12” by 12” acrylic paintings on wood by Etherington, he created a grid-like gallery wall. Displaying three of the colorful, framed abstract paintings in a row, Adrian hung the other two below, with a glowing yellow lamp on a table between them.

“That was a great example of a collection of small, meaningful paintings that came together to fit the space in a city apartment,” Greene says.