I thought I'd kick off the New Year with this — a project I completed a year ago and just recently photographed. Here's what happens when someone lobs me the keys and says, "Ok kid, go nuts".

This is a duplex loft in Brooklyn, and upon purchase it was much more traditional/transitional: crown molding, sea foam green walls, orangey oak floors. Many people were involved in the decision-making, but I was more or less in charge of the color schemes.

Upstairs in the main room, we did what I call a Fauvist color-washing, in which we attacked the walls with grey glazes applied with putty knives and wallpaper brushes. Downstairs, we used two of the same colors and applied the glaze with a shoe shine brush. That's an off-black powder room upstairs, in the bathroom downstairs I created a faux-fossil fish room, and the piece de resistance is the two-tone tree painting behind the master bed, by dear friend and colleague Brian Gilmartin.

Images: Mark Chamberlain

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