5 beautiful artists’ homes around the world that you can visit

‘When Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant moved to their home in East Sussex, England, they started painting on its surfaces. They painted its walls and mantles, doors and doorframes, furniture, cabinets and window seats. They covered their home with swirls and patterns, lush human figures, and painted bowls of painted fish. Their home became a sketchbook where they improvised ideas, and also a work of art in its own right: a three-dimensional painting they could live inside.’

The house, galleries and garden at Charleston are normally open to the public. Check for current restrictions.

‘Contemporary artist Hassan Hajjaj’s house in Marrakech is at once a private home, gallery, gift shop and tearoom. He has filled its tiled courtyard with furniture of his own design, made from repurposed red plastic crates and round buckets topped with custom cushions. For Hajjaj, homes are not only spaces of retreat, but also places where we extend ourselves in hospitality to others. Like his bold multimedia installations, Hajjaj’s concept of home is dynamic and inventive: a cross between museum and house, art and home.’

Riad Yima’s shop, gallery and tearoom are all open to the public.

‘In her house on the Cane River in Louisiana, Clementine Hunter rolled wallpaper right across the ceilings and down both walls, arching her rooms in patterned warmth. Almost all her life, she worked and lived on the Melrose Plantation, deep in Jim Crow racism. At night, she stayed up late and painted evocative botanicals and landscapes. From her screened-in porch, Hunter sold her work to collectors – and charged an admission fee to those who came to look. She understood her work’s value, though it was too often dismissed as folk art curiosity (then and now).’

The Melrose Plantation is open to the public.

‘At her home in New Mexico, Georgia O’Keeffe lived in daily intimacy with the landscape – the colours and forms so central to her art. Inside her house, she experimented with aesthetic vocabularies. Like sketches, she arranged and rearranged her collections of skulls and rocks and bones. Her home offered her both artistic immersion and a respite. An avid gardener, O’Keeffe canned and dried her harvests. On the plain white sofa in her kitchen, she placed throw pillows printed with delicate farmhouse flowers and patterned with hearts.’

Georgia O’Keeffe’s home and studio in Abiguiú are normally open to the public between March and November every year. You must book a tour in advance. Check for current restrictions.

‘At the edge of Long Island in New York, Lee Krasner and Jackson Pollock restored and decorated their run-down house with improvised materials and scavenged pieces. They painted there alongside one another. Later, when Pollock succumbed to alcoholism and died in a horrific car crash, Krasner found ways to continue. Her life in their home was shaped by grief, and also by the art she made; its depth and lyricism. Over the years, her space evolved, marked by the ebbing ways our homes can hold us through life’s many shifts.’

The Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center are open to the public between May and October every year. You must book a tour in advance.

‘Artists in Residence’ is published by Chronicle Books.