A Look At My Favourite Thrifted Art Pieces

I’ve talked at length about my love of thrifting, but here on the blog I tend to focus on clothing purchases. While we do source almost all our clothing and footwear from second-hand shops, our thrifting does NOT end there. You name it, we’ve likely at least considered buying said item second-hand. (Don’t worry – I buy all our toothbrushes new. There are limits.)

One of our favourite things to source second-hand is art.

John and I both love art. We love visiting galleries together (I was beaming when I read J’s post that included a picture at Musée de l’Orangerie, I just talked about the Louvre this week), we love looking at art, we love discussing art, and – perhaps miraculously – we tend to enjoy similar aesthetics. (If we were ever fabulously wealthy, I think John would move heaven and earth to own a van Gogh.)

Inspired by Daria’s post, I thought I’d take a little tour around our home and highlight some thrifted art (I’d say this is just under half the thrifted pieces in our home?).

Let’s start with my favourite.

This painting hangs over the mantle in our main living space. I love the colours, the movement, the child’s face turned to the outside world, the mother’s face hidden by her floppy hat; the warmth conveyed in texture, colour, and season – it looks like a delightfully sunny day at the beach with nary a flurry or puffer coat in sight. This painting was under $30.

Spoiler alert ahead of tomorrow, the mantle now looks like this:

I love this painting. It’s probably my second favourite thrifted piece.

I find this painting extremely soothing and it makes me smile every time I look at it – which is often since it hangs in the entryway of our home. It was under $25.

There’s not much to say in terms of commentary but I really like this picture – the colours, the frame, the simplicity. I think this one was about $15 and it hangs in our dining room.

Pictures do not do this set justice. The reflection of the light on the glass was making for horrible photos, hence the odd angle from below. This is a lovely trio – and we bought each picture for $3.99 at a thrift store before having them professionally matted (paying extra for the black trimmed interior which I’ve done twice for custom matting and LOVE) and then plopped put them in inexpensive IKEA frames. We found these shortly after our trip to Paris and it felt meant to be! These hang in the master bedroom.

John spotted this sketch at a local thrift store (I think it was about $10) – he loved it right away and it hung in our house for years before we looked more closely and discovered it was a historic home in Charleston, South Carolina. The Rutledge House, completed in the late 1700s, was built for John Rutledge – one of the signatories of the American Constitution! It’s now a public inn and we visited in May 2022 and took pictures of the actual site.

Cool, huh?!

Okay, so this wasn’t a thrift store find, but it WAS a yard sale find. We paid $75 for this print of the Alex Colville – a famous Canadian painter – Horse and Train. It’s not my favourite Colville work, but beggars can’t be choosers. Fun fact: Colville graduated from the same university where John and I completed our undergraduate degrees…and eventually ended up living (he passed away in 2013) in the Nova Scotian town where we now live.

Can you spot our print in this outdoor gallery?

Chalk this Matisse print up under the It’s Growing On Me category. John loves this picture (we paid less than $20) but I made him hang it in the guest room so I don’t see it regularly. I was not a big fan. But, over time, I’ve started to both tolerate and enjoy it. We got to see a wonderful Matisse exhibit in Denmark many years ago; he’s not in my top picks for artists, but I can appreciate the aesthetic and it definitely hits the mark in terms of colour and whimsy!

Your turn. Have you ever purchased art second-hand? What’s your favourite art piece in your home and why? Do you like art galleries or find them boring? Do you have a favourite artist or style of art? If you could have one of these thrifted art pieces in your home, which one would you choose?

Header photo by Martin de Arriba on Unsplash