Painted Floor

When I first saw the apartment, the floors were covered wall to wall with a brown high pile shag carpet that did not appear to have been shampooed in many a year. When the carpets were removed the acutely dilapidated, planked floor beneath it would be painted battle ship grey, as it had apparently been many times before the shag. As the apartment evolved and carpets were chosen, the grey began to represent a design void. It seemed dreadfully bland and incomplete and obviously the cheapest of all refinishing solutions. I decided to take the abstract geometric motif's of the carpets and apply them to the painted floor from one end of the apartment to the other. It not only tied the place together very nicely, it created a playful contrast between the saturated colors and their monochromatic counterparts. There's a bit of Tromp'e L'oeil to it. By varying the thicknesses of the black shapes, an illusion different shadow weights is created, suggesting a staggering of plane heights. the border around the living room carpet narrows at it's furthest end in order to force perspective and, in so doing, subliminally suggest that the room is longer than it actually is. There also seems to be a Wizard of Oz thing going on in the floors transition from black and white to full Technicolor and in the black and white, some 50 Shades of Grey. Over all, I might describe the floor as Modern Deco Fun House.