The mother-daughter team brightening up your home with bespoke online art

The mother and daughter duo set up their business, AttikoArt, around three years ago, creating bespoke pieces of art to complement any interior design scheme.

The unique concept sees freelance painter Michelle creating coastal-inspired work in the studio at her Bournemouth home, while her daughter Melissa uses her graphic design and interiors background to create an original colour way to work with their client's home design, making a striking statement for any wall.

With Melissa growing up spending hours in Michelle's studio when the family lived in Spain, it was almost a given that she would go into a creative career.

"Melissa grew up in that creative environment," says Michelle. "We used to spends hours and hours in the studio, just playing around with paints.

"Melissa and I always enjoyed being creative. It also went into our home – we were always redecorating, her bedroom was always re-styled yearly.

"We've always got on so well and had always shared creative ideas and also fantasised about doing something together but never really knew what."

Melissa studied graphic design in Leeds before going onto work in interiors in London. Until one particular project forged a partnership between the pair, which went onto inspire the idea for AttikoArt.

"I was doing an interior design project in Putney for two sisters," says Melissa, "completely different tastes – one of them wanted grey, one of them wanted mad colour. We had done the house and it was all looking beautiful, but they had just this one wall that was screaming for something.

"We didn't have a massive budget but we needed something to tie in the whole scheme. I could not find anything for this wall that would satisfy them both that was in the right colour.

"I came to mum asking for help. She came up with something – they absolutely loved it. It was predominantly grey, but then we introduced a bit of colour. We did it in pink, then digitally added the yellow.

"They had friends that came over and one of their guy friends said "I would love that, but I can't do pink". So we went away and created the blue colour way for him."

The business has now developed into a website featuring a range of different abstract prints, all shown in various colours. But a bespoke shade can be created for any of the images, at a client's request.

"I paint on canvas," explains Michelle. "It's a very creative and fluid process. I paint when I'm inspired. Sometimes Melissa will inspire me by pointing out some interiors trend. One of my paintings was inspired by the dappled light coming through the trees. So I do the canvases and then they're photographed and that's when the digital bit starts."

Melissa digitally modifies the images from her London home, using her graphic design skills to modify the colours.

"We do like to stay relevant in terms of trends," she says. "We definitely keep tabs on what's happening, what people are drawn to.

"Some people have a clear idea. Some people just come to us and say 'all I like in this room is this cushion'. It's amazing how many people have different ideas.

"The idea behind the website is we have the original and then we always have a couple of different colour ways, to encourage people to think about different colours. We quite like to come up with three or four different colour ways as an example. Or, if people want to come up with a bespoke piece, which they can from us, it gets them to look at what colours work well."

Clients can send in photos of their home, so Melissa can create a bespoke shade to complement their decor, and can even drop the art work into the supplied image, so home owners can get a clear vision of what the piece will look like on their wall.

"It's really a marriage of art for interior design," explains Michelle.

"We really do see art as part of the interior design scheme. We just want people to pull their homes together in a way that makes them love their room.

"We never go to people's homes, we never get to meet them, but we still manage to build up a conversation with people. It's so satisfying for us."

The pair also now work alongside interior designers, to create a unique piece to finish off a project.

"It's nice to be able to make their home a bit more personal to them, and less generic," adds Melissa.

"A lot of the comments we get back from the customer are that we've really finished the room."

With Michelle based down in Bournemouth and Melissa living in London, their pair have also found the business has brought them even closer together, particularly following the tragic loss of Michelle's husband and Melissa's father.

"I had been in Spain for 30 years when my husband suddenly got ill and passed away six years ago," says Michelle, who moved back to the UK four years ago to be closer to her daughter.

"That was a dark, terrible moment in our lives. One of those things that you think will never happen to you.

"It makes you realise that life is short and if you want to do something, just go for it."

It was the push that the pair needed to pursue their dream of working together.

"That did drive us down that route," says Melissa.

"We are actually a lot closer after it. Mum is based here, so this is where the studio is and as soon as those files are digital, they make their way to London, where I am," say Melissa. "But we come together two or three times a month."

Having seen the business, which is named after the top floor apartment, or "atico", where the family lived in Spain, really take off over the last two years, the pair are now looking at ways to expand their service.

"We do want to remain abstract, but we are doing some that are a bit more coastal-inspired, so you might see a bit of landscape on them", says Melissa. "We do just want it to be a textural piece for your wall.

"We don't want it to seem that we are unapproachable, we want people to have a bit of fun, just try it out."

Michelle adds: "It is a business, of course it is, but it's also a business of passion."

attikoart.com