In this beautiful Mediterranean home, my clients had already surrounded themselves with artwork collected over many years, pieces discovered on their travels and others that held memories of shared moments. When they asked me to curate a piece for the expansive wall in their living room, I wanted to find something that could command the space while still feeling deeply personal.
We began with the idea of finding a piece that might evoke the years they spent traveling together before starting their family. I immediately thought of artist Terri Froelich, whose large-scale abstract paintings bring remarkable depth, movement, and vitality to a room.
Travel and observation are integral to Froelich’s practice. She draws inspiration from details discovered both close to home and while traveling: the movement of wind and water, changing light, unexpected shapes, and colors. Through painting, photography, and mixed media, these fragments of experience are layered and reconciled into compositions that feel both spontaneous and beautifully balanced.
Whenever possible, I like my clients to live with a work of art before deciding to acquire it. We installed Treasure Hunt and gave them a few days to experience the painting in their home.
Aesthetically, it was brilliant. Its scale anchored the living room, while its color and energy enlivened the architecture. The painting could be seen from the entry, the upstairs landing, and adjoining rooms, revealing itself differently from each vantage point.
But what happened next was what made the piece truly theirs.
As the husband spent time with Treasure Hunt, he began to see something unexpected within its layers: memories of the places they had traveled together, almost as though fragments of those journeys had been pieced together across the wood panel.
Suddenly, even the title felt serendipitous.
What began as a search for the right painting for a large wall became something much more meaningful, a visual treasure hunt through a life they had built together.