Art is deeply personal. It can transport, transform or simply make us pause and feel. In this month’s Design Digest I explore a personal approach to collecting, and we also turn our attention to artist Tunku Khalsom who is featured in the Katharine Pooley Boutique this season.
Collecting art is less about following trends and more about finding pieces that create a genuine emotional response. I’m drawn to artists whose work has a sense of poetry, atmosphere and personality- from Hitomi Hosono’s intricate porcelain and Gavin Turk’s wit, to Agnes Martin’s quiet minimalism and Pierre Soulages’s extraordinary exploration of black.
Perhaps the most personal work I own is a portrait of Queen Elizabeth II, commissioned for the Katharine Pooley Studio boardroom and created from tens of thousands of pennies, individually placed according to the depth of their patina. Inspired by the saying “Find a penny, pick it up…”, it is playful and respectful at once, while carrying a sense of shared cultural memory.
For me, a truly marvellous work needs to do more than demonstrate technical brilliance; it should make you smile, stir something instinctive or simply continue to give you a feeling long after you first encountered it.
Waddington Custot is a gallery I regularly return to for its thoughtful curation, while HOFA brings a fresh contemporary energy. For historical works, Darnley Fine Art offers that wonderful thrill of discovering a portrait or landscape that seems to speak across centuries.
I also enjoy buying from galleries where conversation and relationships matter, and through my sister’s Swan Hill Studios in Shrewsbury, I’m continually exposed to emerging contemporary talent. I like a collection to evolve organically, balancing antiques and historical pieces with modern discoveries rather than following a rigid wishlist.
As mentioned, this month we’re also featuring the work of artist Tunku Khalsom – an international artist of British and Malaysian descent, now based in Singapore. A self-taught abstract artist with a background in interior architecture, Khalsom creates vibrant, fluid works predominantly using inks, exploring life, love, change and the beauty found within imperfection.
Her themes speak to transformation and the contrasts of human experience, while bold colour and expressive textures give her work its unmistakable energy. Her mantra, “always changing, always growing,” feels particularly fitting for an artist whose work celebrates beauty in chaos. And, much like interiors, I believe art should never feel too perfect.
Ultimately, collecting art is about creating a relationship with the pieces we choose to live with. The most meaningful works are not necessarily the most valuable or celebrated, but those that continue to surprise, move or delight us over time. Whether a centuries-old portrait, a contemporary painting or an unexpected emerging talent, the right piece brings character and soul to a space and becomes part of its story.
