" I REALLY LIKE PHYSICAL WORK. AND I LIKE TO do something with my hands," says Beth Halstead, one of Toronto’s most sought-after decorative artists and regular guest on Cityline, HGTV’s This Small Space and In the Workshop, and the Life Networks’s Sue Warden CraftScapes and Design for Living with Kimberley Seldon.
Undoubtedly there’s an aesthetic component to Halstead’s work, painstakingly executing some of the intricate and graceful surface treatments and murals she’s conceived. But the term "artist" causes the pragmatic Halstead to recoil: "I don’t even know how to define that word. I’m sure my parents would say that I’m an artist because they think I have bit of a nutty lifestyle." She puses before adding, with typical directness. "There are certainly better artists, but they can’t sell themselves out of a shoebox. I really enjoy the business end of it. It’s fun."
Halstead’s first taste of the twin joys ofmanagment and hard work came in high school when she was employed as an landscaper, eventually launching her own operation with a beau. A stint at her father’s Burlington-based paving business followed. Halstead reflects fondly on this grueling chapter in her history: "I was doing heavy physical labour. I was in great shape. I got to hand out with guys all day. Plus, I got paid," she laughs. "I loved it."
After earning a degree in psychology from Brock University, Halstead, 31 toyed with the idea of becoming a teacher before enrolling in an interior design course at Sheridan College. But a funny thing happened on the way to becoming a decorator. In order to keep herself afloat in the early days, Halstead waitressed and then slipped back into landscaping for a living. Although she had no formal artistic training, before long she was being pressed into service to create special paint finishes for outdoor installations: cast-iron urns, terra-cotta pots and the like. One job required her to distress brand-new flagstones in order to match a new portion of patio to an existing one that had weathered some 35 years. Such outdoor work led to interior contracts and soon Halstead was in business, working almost exclusively with some of the city’s top interior designers.
Her company, Alternative Situations, which handles mainly residential projects, is fuelled by an evidently insatiable appetite on the public’s part for unusual paint effects, hand-painted murals and other custom surface treatments. Halstead and her two assistants will transform virtually any surface. Her own west-end Toronto home, where her studio is based, is an ongoing experiment: |
|
She has antiqued the kitchen cabinets, painted the bathroom ceiling to resemble an area rug with swan motif and decorated the stairwell wall with a huge map of the world. What especially engages her is creating unusual finished, such as the environmentally friendly latex finishes she has developed to achieve comparable effects to oils.
Halstead’s prices are commensurate with a labour-intensive process and her exacting standards. (A wall mural for example can cost the same or less than having someone install wallpaper.) "There only one quality of work that I do. I can’t do a bathroom for $150. If that’s what a client is looking for, the she should have her neighbour’s sister’s friend do it," Halstead says with a cheerful matter-of-factness.
After 11 years in the business, Halstead reports that the demand for her creations has only increased. "Because finishes keep changing, there’s always something new," she explains. "The hot things now, for instand, are old-world finishes that look like wallpaper, and textured plaster, whereas a year or two ago all people wanted was polished plaster. The trend now is to put designs in the plaster either by doing raised medallions–butting a stencil, creating medallions and then doing a treatment over them–or plastering the whole room and then creating a pattern or texture on top. It could be a damask-like pattern or even a Renaissance painting.
One wonders why, in the midst of a minimalist revival, so many people still crave such richness. "We live in a country that’s so new. But people love to travel. They go to Europe and see how old and worldly all that texture is. So it’s a way to add character to our home, which may, in fact, be full of new drywall.
The desire for personal expression, Halstead believes, also contributes to her crammed agenda. "For years, clients were happy to have designers do everything for them. They’d say, ‘Make my house looks great’ without caring whether it was an expression of them." In a Martha Stewart world, however, all that has changed.
Although she revels in her creative job, Halstead scoffs at the idea that it’s glamourous. "Actually, it’s schlepping heavy milk carton of paint around all day and running up and down scaffolding and sweating and being dirty all the time." Still, she readily admits that there are perks: "I get to wear construction boots. So that’s cool." |
|
A waxed art piece and antique candleholder is framed by a damask-stenciled bathroom wall. |
