Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.\u201cThe \u2018chuck out your chintz\u2019 Ikea campaign was in the early 1990s, wasn\u2019t it? And everything was off-white after that. But in the past five years that\u2019s changed; maximalism is back in, as a reaction to what\u2019s gone before.\u201dLucinda Oakes is offering an explanation why the order book for her bespoke murals and wall decorations is currently so full. Cyclical decor trends may have something to do with it, but so has the delicacy of her brushwork and the spirit-lifting quality of the natural scenes she recreates indoors.Her work ranges from small over-door panels and chimney screens \u2014 to cover fireplaces in the summer months \u2014 to whole immersive roomscapes. It can be seen in several rooms in Ballyfin Demesne hotel in County Laois in Ireland. Smaller murals are painted in situ, directly on to the plaster, but for larger projects, which take several months, she favours marouflage. This involves painting on expanses of paper or canvas in scuff-resistant acrylic paint in her studio in a Georgian house in Hastings, on the Sussex coast. The finished pieces are shipped off to be hung like wallpaper by experts in the client\u2019s home. But even this remote work is preceded by time spent judging the light and mood of a space. \u201cI have done work for Americans where I haven\u2019t needed a site visit,\u201d she says, \u201cbut I had really good measurements, down to an 18th of an inch.\u201dShe is constantly gathering reference images from all over the world \u2014 one crowded Pinterest board on her tablet is headed \u2018Birds on doors\u2019When I visit on a bleak January day, one wall of the studio is hung with a 9ft by 9ft canvas panel, one of 15 that will fill a room in an Oxfordshire house. Under a warm summer sky, a garden framed by trees stretches away to a gazebo in the middle distance, in a scene influenced by the Italian master Tiepolo. On a stone parapet in the foreground, between pots of nasturtiums and echeveria succulents, a pile of books is topped with a pair of gardening gloves, as if their owner has left the scene moments before.Commissions come either directly from clients or, more often, from interior designers. She works to briefs that vary from the broad \u2014 \u201cjust a colour reference\u201d \u2014 to the highly specific; one of the book titles on the piece she\u2019s working on was requested by the client.After gaining an MA in fine art, Oakes followed a path marked by her father George Oakes, himself a celebrated decorative painter, design director at the most English of interior designers, Colefax and Fowler, and who was commissioned to decorate the Audience Chamber at Buckingham Palace. He remains an influence on her work, along with mainly 17th and 18th-century painters and muralists. But she is constantly gathering reference images for work from all over the world \u2014 one crowded Pinterest board on her tablet is headed \u201cBirds on doors\u201d.Oakes\u2019s talent for trompe l\u2019oeil, seducing the viewer into thinking the painted design exists in three dimensions, is uncanny. The shadowing on her monochrome grisaille decorations that mimic plaster mouldings has been known to confuse autofocus cameras, she says. She has been tempted sometimes to try a freer, more impressionistic style, \u201cbut I think people wouldn\u2019t like it. If it\u2019s me, they want to see detail; they\u2019re not happy with just brush marks\u201d.Mural prices from \u00a38,000; timeframe 10 days to 10 months; lucindaoakes.comFind out about our latest stories first \u2014 follow @ft_houseandhome on Instagram<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.\u201cThe \u2018chuck out your chintz\u2019 Ikea campaign was in the early 1990s, wasn\u2019t it? And everything was off-white after that. But in the past five years<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":225998,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-225997","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-culture"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225997","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=225997"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225997\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":225999,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225997\/revisions\/225999"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/225998"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=225997"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=225997"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=225997"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}