Alice Stolz on art at home: "The love that I feel when I see it"

When my children started nursery school, like many parents I would plaster their artwork to the fridge, resulting in a hodgepodge of different paintings, drawings and scribbles.

Somewhat inevitably it would one day drive me crazy and I’d take it all down (the result of three children means a lot of “art” each week), with the full confidence that it would be replaced the next week faster than I could say “where’s the Blu Tack?”

And then my daughters upped the ante and actually started to make seriously gorgeous things. A pottery cornucopia with detailed fruit alongside it by my eldest when she was 12. The most perfect family portrait by my youngest daughter aged six. A painting with so much vigour and verve that only someone who had discovered the joy of acrylic paint for the first time could produce (my middle child with her signature approach of wild abandonment).

Not all the art in our home is provided by my children. I do have a few very beautiful and special pieces that I have accumulated over the years. My rules of thumb are: purchase art that moves you and that holds meaning, whether it be the piece you bought as a birthday present, to celebrate a new job, mark the end of a relationship or something as inconsequential as the small piece you bought just because it spoke to you.

Oh, and I am an absolute stickler for proper framing (irrespective of the value of the art).

But back to the accrual of my most treasured art collection. I realised a few years ago that the works were drying up. There was no longer a big folio flung across the kitchen bench on a Friday. The pieces made at school for Mother’s Day started to disappear and were replaced by (mandatory for me) homemade cards and a cup of tea in bed.

And so, I developed what I call an art wall. It’s my favourite spot in the house as it’s so full of personality and vivid memories – every family should have one. When we moved back into our home last year I rebuilt this art wall, curated with my favourite works from each of my girls.

I cannot alter it – I am that hooked to the current layout; to the stories they tell, the memories they evoke and the love that I feel when I see it. It’s an analogy of how I see parenting; a mass of colour and emotion, messy and tattered, wild and wonderful and sometimes faded and curled by the sun.

And as far as art goes, absolutely priceless.