The Founder Behind Bilt Rewards Chose An Original For His Primary Bedroom

The primary bedroom Architectural Digest photographed last August belongs to Ankur Jain, the founder of Bilt Rewards — the platform that turns a renter's monthly payment into real credit and real rewards. For the wall above his bed, he didn't specify a print.

The ask

He and his team at the New York design firm Asthetique reached out about an original for the room. I painted and presented options until one was right for that specific wall — the same process I use for every commission, in oil and mixed media, built up in layers over weeks. It's a hand-made piece that exists exactly once. Architectural Digest (AD India, August 2025) later published the finished room.

Why the choice stays with me

Bilt Rewards operates at a scale most companies never reach — a digital platform built to serve millions of renters at once. For his own bedroom, the one room built for rest rather than scale, Jain chose the opposite of what he builds all day: something made slowly, by one pair of hands, for one wall only. That's not a small thing to hand a painter.

It's also the clearest argument I know for commissioning an original instead of buying reproducible art. A print can be reordered infinitely. A commissioned original can't — it answers to one room's light, one room's proportions, one collector's decision, and then it's finished.

How a commission works

• We start with the room. Dimensions, light, palette, the feeling the space is meant to hold.
• I paint in the round. Work builds up and gets worked back over weeks in oil and mixed media until the surface earns its quiet.
• You choose. I present options and we land on the piece that's right for the wall — the same way we did for Jain's bedroom.
• It ships from my studio to yours, rolled and stretched fresh on arrival, with a certificate of authenticity.

Original work for a room that's actually yours

This is the work I do every day from Nashville: original abstract paintings made for specific rooms, for designers, collectors, and founders alike who want art that belongs to one home and nowhere else. If a room in your life 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