“Oh, I love a grey sky,” Arch Hades shares, as we drive the winding country roads on the way to her home and studio, “the sky here is always changing, it’s always surprising me.” Though the poet-turned-artist has called London home for years, she recently jumped on the opportunity to purchase a countryside property, where she now resides with her pet corgi, Byron, when the two are not in the city. In the just-under-two-years since then, the artist has created a haven here, with a home, a studio and even a two-story gothic-inspired library. 

A massive pinboard anchors her studio space, with everything from architectural elements to Canaletto theater sets and photographs she sourced online. Other sources of inspiration come from her new bucolic surroundings. A man she saw sitting in a chair while out on a walk one day landed in one of her paintings. A fig tree in her back garden, damaged during a recent storm, made its way into another. Lately, a horse with wildly flailing legs has been galloping through her dreams, after seeing an unforgettable statue on a trip. When she’s not visualizing, she’s busy reading inside her home library. 

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