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Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen: Recent Paintings runs from May 19 at Cotswold Contemporary Gallery, Market Place, Cirencester, cotswoldcontemporary. Fans were equally as excited as Laurence, as many took to the comments to share their messages of congratulations with the 57-year-old. Changing Rooms' flamboyant lead designer Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen has spent his entire career encouraging people to reject decorative modesty. My mother was incredibly supportive,” he says, despite her hopes of him one day pursuing a career in law. Based on English artist and book illustrator Walter Crane, this is an indulgent and quite extravagant evocation of bird-and-bough pattern-making, with fantastical feathered friends, lending it a ‘boudoir’ feel.
I don't like those experiences where it becomes all about the food, where it becomes difficult and complicated. Beautifully written with excellent classic Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen tone of voice, the words jump of the page with grandeur and emphasis. There are 16 of them so far, and these people are absolutely extraordinary because the one thing they have in common is that they’re all happy. The programme explored the threats to the rural way of life from urban creep and the loss of local services.I think one of the biggest and hottest British exports you can find is opinionated middle-aged men,” he says. The show was popular (peaking at 12 million viewers) and transformative, opening the country’s eyes to the possibilities of rag-rolling, stencilling and deep shades of purple. Instead it’s all about giving you the confidence to curate your own perfect haven of chaos, so you can live and love your stuff in surroundings that are anything but beige. On first glance, the gorgeously playful, strokable hardback book appears to be a Monty Python-esque collage of LLB’s most feverish of fever dreams.
These are literal souvenirs of a life well lived, and they should not be confined to 'storage', but celebrated in the space that you inhabit. It’s all about giving yourself the confidence you lack by curating your own perfect haven of chaos, so that you can live with and love your stuff – in surroundings that are anything but beige. He continues to do so in his latest show, My Lottery Dream Home International, where he helps lottery winners find and decorate new homes.He also encourages people to use fragrances within their homes – but to stay away from modern trends, such as green grass and clean laundry. All of those rooms that cost a fortune to heat; all of those echoey acoustics and uncomfortable furniture. He and his wife are ambassadors to the aid agency CARE International UK and in February 2008 visited the cyclone-hit areas of Bangladesh.
My journey through the book is challenging why people believed that was a good idea; why did we want to control life like that when we could have been surfing it instead? The funny thing about this author and Marie Kondo is that their advice for deciding which items to employ in your surroundings is quite similar.
Laurence said: "If you're hiding it in the garage then get rid of it or otherwise you end up with irritable bowel syndrome in your storage, which is very unpleasant. We shouldn't be feeling that we've got to conform to a fundamentally 20th century concept of minimalism which suggests we should be controlling our interior spaces as if it's some kind of pathogen against nature.
As part of our interview series, My Happy Home, Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen talks about showing off your bargains and wh y he thinks grey is actually a 'great' colour. I wanted to create a space that had all of the enjoyment and energy that the Morris dynasty derived from nature. It’s such an indelible part of the British aesthetic psyche,’ he says, ‘I think it can and should be used to lead into a completely new way of decorating.
Aged eight, he remembers, he had a “phenomenal fight” with his parents, who refused to let him paint his bedroom ceiling purple; they compromised with a “euphemistic blue”. Maximalism has almost sprung up overnight; it’s a slightly unwieldy term for what is, essentially, anti-Modernism. His party, the Purple Party, " lobbied" for a restoration of Britain's heritage, and several extreme architectural measures such as tearing down all buildings that did not conform to their surroundings. In 2022 he appeared in Pilgrimage as part of a group of celebrities with different religious affiliations who travelled in the footsteps of Saint Columba.
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