DOUBLE VISION - FOR INTERIOR DESIGNER AND ARTIST MARJORIE CRANSTON, MELDING TWO BUSINESSES MAKES FOR A BEAUTIFUL LIFE.
By Cara McDonald / Photos Courtesy of Jack Straw Mountain Gallery

Artist and interior designer Marjorie Cranston.

Art can be a squishy thing to define.

Is decorating art? Interior design?

A rendering of the exact landscape you see from your window? For artist and interior designer Marjorie Cranston, of Jack Straw Mountain Gallery, all of these things fit the bill – her bill, actually.

“If it involves a blank canvas, literally or in the shape of an empty room, and you have the ability not to labor it out but actually see a vision and then replicate it, then that to me is art.”

Vision is Cranston’s stock in trade. The longtime Grand Lake resident has built a life that for some fine artists may seem an odd pairing – a home design business with her passionate creation of pastel landscapes of the area. Summer days find her in her shop on Grand Avenue in Grand Lake filling out orders for design packages and discussing the merits of pillar candles and table-top fireplaces, often while she’s poised in front of her easel at work on a new painting.

Having two resumés is only a bonus, however. Students of her art classes get a teacher who can speak in terms of strategy, revision and goals; clients in her home design business get a problem solver with an artist’s eye. Much as she loves working with builders, she says she never approaches it without an artist’s perception – light, materials, shapes and context.

Painting by Marjorie Cranston entitled Flower Boat.

For one home in the Front Range, she spent hours hiking behind the proposed site, gathering materials for color inspiration – a sampling of plants, stones, and especially the red earth of the lot helped her client choose exterior colors and materials that would harmonize the home with the environment. The resulting home? “It’s art; it’s fun,” she says. “There are surprises everywhere.”

“It’s really been a kick,” Cranston says, swinging her legs and scuffing her boots softly on the wood floors of her shop. Today she looks like an artist, in black with chunky silver jewelry and cowboy boots. “When art’s down, home design is up; when home design is down, like now, art is up.” The funny thing, she says, about the current economy, is that it’s driving people to the art side of her business: “I think they’re looking to buy some soul,” she says. “People are tired of living, but not living. They want to spend money on something meaningful.”

A quick scan of her shop/studio shows why people find that meaning and comfort within her work. Furniture is repurposed or antiqued, or handmade. Imperfections abound; paint is uneven; character is everywhere. It’s an immediately beautiful and comforting space to be in, where things have color, scale and heft to them.

Painting by Marjorie Cranston entitled Baldy Moods Spring.

The art on the walls has no less impact. It’s all Cranston’s own; scenes of marshy ponds slashed by the red of a canoe, or a barren field softened by the scrub of willow with it’s glowing hues of red, gold, and teal. She started painting these bold, large-scale pieces on a design job early in her career. “I’d go into these big houses and feel these empty spaces, huge walls, and think ‘I could do a picture for that.’”

While art isn’t necessarily a part of her design services, clients who come to know her well tend to ask her to create pieces for them. Most of her work is landscapes. “I can paint what’s outside my window day after day and marvel at how it changes,” she says.

“With landscapes, what you see is not what you paint. You see a landscape ... it’s all white, but it’s not white. I see that the snow is blue; the sky has purple; the trees are a beautiful (if dead) red.” Art, like life, is like that for Cranston. “I see it with color. It isn’t concrete to me at all.”

READ MORE STORIES FROM THIS ISSUE:
• Feature: The Key To An Inspired Remodel
• Green Parade: A Brighter Shade Of Grassroots Green
• Art & Design: Going Against the Grain with James Reed - Artful Furniture without Stains, Nails, or Power Tools
• Lifestyle: A Trail Advocate Pushes the Pedals
• Summer 2010 Articles