Tour This Self-Taught Maine Artist’s Eclectic, Gallery-Inspired Home

Lover of quirky, oversized decor and all things vintage, self-taught artist Allison McKeen's home doubles as a cozy escape and functioning art exhibit. Together with her artist and collector husband, Matt, they discovered the home of their dreams in Gardiner, Maine, and immediately removed all the color from the walls. “We bought our house in 2019,” Allison says. “And we love that the previous owners kept a lot of the character. But we did things like paint the walls white to give it more of a gallery feeling [so] the objects speak for themselves.”

"When we moved in, we actually did already have a lot of the things that are here now," Allison says. "That being said, we do also kind of rotate things out. We're always out treasure hunting and looking for new things. So things do tend to come and go and we just kind of fit them into this space while they're here."

“Most of the things in our house are found, meaning they're from a thrift store or yard sale, antique fair ... or maybe they're handmade by somebody that we know,” Allison shares. "Like this antique storage bench and our couch were Facebook Marketplace finds."

“When I'm putting together a vignette or a display area, I'm thinking a lot about the flow and the balance of it,” she says. “So it's not necessarily that these objects have a direct relationship to each other, but more aesthetically they balance each other out."