How a Nashville Painting Landed in Architectural Digest
Angela Simeone in her Nashville studio, where the painting later published in Architectural Digest began.
A painting that started on the floor of my Nashville studio now hangs above a bed in Manhattan — and last August, it was published in Architectural Digest. Here is how an original abstract painting found its way from a studio in Tennessee into one of the most-read design magazines in the world, and what that says about commissioning art made for a specific room.
The commission behind the page
The New York design firm Asthetique — creative directors Julien Albertini and Alina Mehrle — reached out about a painting for the primary bedroom of a West Village home they were designing for Ankur Jain and Erika Hammond. They didn't want a print pulled from a catalog. They wanted an original built for the room.
So that's what we made. I worked directly with the firm and the client, painting and presenting options until one piece was right for the space. Architectural Digest (AD India, August 2025) later published the home, and the painting hangs above the bed in the primary bedroom they designed.
What it actually means to be in Architectural Digest
The credential is lovely, but the part that matters to me isn't the logo on the page. It's what the page proves: that an original — made by hand, in the round, calibrated to one room's color, scale and light — earned its place in a home photographed for a magazine read all over the world. A mass-produced print couldn't have done that. The room asked for something made for it.
That's the whole argument for an original. A painting made for your wall is one of one. It answers to the light in your room, the proportions of your furniture, the palette your designer has spent months building. It can't be reordered, and it won't turn up in someone else's house.
How a commission works
If you're a designer or a collector, the process is collaborative from the first conversation:
- We start with the room. Dimensions, light, palette, the feeling you want the space to hold.
- I paint in the round. Work builds up and gets scraped back over weeks in oil and mixed media until the surface earns its quiet.
- You choose together. I present options, and we land on the piece that's right for the wall — the same way we did for the bedroom in AD.
- It ships from my studio to the wall, with a certificate of authenticity and condition notes, so the provenance reads as one clear line.
An original Angela Simeone painting installed above a bed in a primary bedroom — the same category of commission as the AD-featured piece.
Originals made for interiors
This is the work I do every day from Nashville: original abstract paintings made for specific rooms, for designers and collectors who want art that belongs to one home. Over twenty-plus years that work has been placed in private residences and hospitality projects and covered in press from Architectural Digest to Forbes.
If you have a wall — or a whole project — that wants its own painting, I'd love to talk. You can commission a piece here, or browse original paintings available now.
— Angela Simeone, contemporary painter, Nashville
