Seven Energies of Gold: Choosing Art for Your Los Angeles Home
In a Los Angeles home, art shares the room with light. A window may frame the hills, a living room may open toward a garden, or a compact apartment may depend on one carefully chosen wall to establish its character. Choosing a photograph begins with the space you actually inhabit—and how you want to feel when you come home.
From a Silver Lake bungalow to a Downtown loft, a Westside apartment or a contemporary Hollywood Hills residence, the same artwork can create very different impressions. Scale, surrounding materials, daylight and viewing distance all influence how a photograph belongs in a room.
This guide explores seven gold fine art photographs by French-American photographer Zack Zublena through seven emotional themes: grounding, creativity, confidence, connection, expression, intuition and unity. The seven-chakra framework offers an artistic vocabulary, not a promise of therapeutic effects. You can choose simply through your response to the image.
For the original exploration of these themes, read The Seven Energies of Gold. Here, the focus is choosing and positioning gold fine art photography in a Los Angeles home.
Choosing Art for Los Angeles Interiors: Begin with Light and Space
Before selecting a print, photograph your intended wall straight on. Measure the usable width between windows, doors, shelving and architectural features. Mark the complete proposed framed dimensions with paper or removable tape suitable for the wall finish. Include the frame and any matting.
Then consider the room beyond that wall. In an open living area, a photograph may be visible from the kitchen, dining table and sofa. In a smaller apartment, it may be encountered at close range. The right format should work from your usual viewpoints, rather than simply fill the largest available surface.
Check the wall in morning light, afternoon light and under your evening lamps. Broad windows and glass doors can create reflections that change throughout the day. Choose a position outside direct sunlight, and discuss glazing and lighting with your framer.
For a useful local design reference, explore the Eames Foundation’s history of the Eames House. Its combination of modern architecture, art, textiles, books and personal objects offers a reminder that a thoughtful home can be visually clear while remaining warm and individual.
1. Grounding
Golden Lotus Fold: Make Coming Home a Moment of Pause
After a day moving between appointments, work and traffic, the entrance to your home can offer a deliberate change of pace. It does not need to be large. A clear wall, a restrained console and one photograph can establish a quiet point of arrival.
Golden Lotus Fold draws the figure inward. Its association here with the root chakra comes from that visual sense of containment and stability. Consider it for an entrance, a reading corner or the transition between a busy shared room and a more private space.
In a bungalow with warm timber or a contemporary interior with pale stone, compare the photograph with the existing textures. Give the composition breathing room rather than surrounding it with objects that compete for attention.
The Getty Museum’s sculpture and decorative arts provide another context for considering bodily form, surface and surrounding space. Bring that attention to the silhouette back to your own wall.
Ask yourself: Where does my day outside end, and my time at home begin?
2. Creativity
The Thinker Reimagined: Give Your Workspace Room for Imagination
A home workspace can be a dedicated studio, a spare bedroom or a desk within the living room. Wherever it sits, the artwork you choose can give that space an identity beyond screens, cables and equipment.
The curved silhouette of The Thinker Reimagined introduces movement within a contained composition. Here it accompanies the sacral theme of creativity. Try it beside the desk, where you can encounter it while looking away from the screen.
In a Downtown Los Angeles loft, check the photograph from both your working chair and the far side of the room. Exposed structure and long sightlines can change the scale a composition needs. A smaller work may suit an intimate desk area even when the surrounding room is generous.
Explore the Hammer Museum’s collections to encounter a range of artistic approaches. Notice what holds your attention: a curve, a gesture, a surprising relationship between forms. Those observations can help you choose art you want to live with.
Ask yourself: Does this space invite new ideas as well as completed tasks?
3. Confidence
I Crown Myself: Give One Wall a Clear Point of View
A contemporary room does not need a photograph on every wall. One deliberate composition can establish a strong focus while leaving the architecture, furniture and view room to contribute.
I Crown Myself expresses confidence through a concentrated golden figure. Associated here with the solar plexus theme, it invites a choice based on personal conviction.
Consider it above a console, beside a doorway or on a solid wall opposite a glazed opening. In a room with a hillside or garden view, ask whether the artwork creates a second point of interest or competes with the view. Test the arrangement from your usual seat.
Compare frame samples against the actual image and nearby materials. Gold, bronze, wood and darker finishes can each create a different relationship with the photograph. Matching every metallic detail in the room is less useful than judging the complete composition.
Ask yourself: Where can this image hold its presence without competing with everything around it?
4. Connection
An Inner Connection: Create a Living Room That Welcomes People
A living room can be beautiful while remaining comfortable enough for unplanned conversation. The artwork should belong to that experience, whether the room is used for a quiet evening or a gathering with friends.
The seated golden figure with joined palms invites an inward reading, associated here with the heart theme of compassion. Against darker furnishings, it can offer a luminous focus. Alongside pale upholstery and natural textures, its surrounding tones can create a gentler arrangement.
In an open living and dining area, look at the photograph from the dining table as well as the sofa. Avoid hanging it solely for the view from the doorway if most of your time in the room is spent elsewhere.
The LACMA collection offers a broad setting for exploring how artists have represented people, gestures and relationships. Use that exploration to deepen your own response to the figure. For further contemplative works, browse Zack’s Golden Balance collection.
Ask yourself: What does this photograph invite someone to notice when they sit here?
5. Expression
I Refuse to Perform: Choose Art That Feels Like You
In a city closely associated with image-making and performance, a private home can offer space for a more personal visual language. Your choice of art does not need to explain your profession, impress a visitor or repeat the latest interior trend.
I Refuse to Perform combines a gathered posture with a title that invites reflection on authenticity and boundaries. Its association with the throat theme rests on expression through restraint.
Consider it for a personal study, a bedroom sitting area or a wall visible from your favorite chair. Choose the place where its meaning will remain part of your everyday life.
Explore MOCA’s collection for encounters with distinct artistic voices. Let those encounters clarify your preferences. The useful question is which visual language continues to matter to you after the first impression.
Ask yourself: Would I still choose this photograph if nobody else saw it?
6. Intuition
Golden Ascension: Find the Right Relationship with Daylight
A room with abundant daylight can still offer difficult conditions for a photograph. Reflections from glass doors, a low afternoon sun or a bright window opposite the artwork can obscure details.
Golden Ascension accompanies the third-eye theme of perception. Its flowing silhouette invites repeated looking. Try it on a bedroom wall or in a dry dressing area where you can enjoy the image regularly.
Before installing, observe the proposed position at different times of day. A wall away from the brightest window may offer a more comfortable view. Suitable glazing can help manage reflections, but it does not make direct sunlight an ideal placement.
The bathroom above is an interior visualization. Steam, splashes and humidity make suitability dependent on the print, framing and room conditions. Discuss any bathroom placement with your framer; a dry adjoining space may be a better choice.
Ask yourself: Where can I return to this image often and see it clearly?
7. Unity
The Art of Connection: Choose Together for a Shared Home
Choosing art together can reveal what each person wants from a shared space. Begin by looking independently, then compare which images you keep returning to and why.
The Art of Connection brings two figures into one golden composition. Associated here with the crown theme of unity, it leaves room for an interpretation rooted in your own relationship.
For a bedroom, include the headboard, bedside lights and complete framed dimensions in your mockup. Check the view from the doorway and from the bed. A wide wall does not automatically require the widest available print.
For a larger shared living space, compare a single photograph with the arrangements described in Zack’s guide to diptychs and triptychs. Include the gaps between panels when calculating the total width.
Ask yourselves: What does this image mean to each of us, and where would we enjoy it together?
Developing Your Eye in Los Angeles
A museum collection can help you recognize your preferences without becoming a decorating formula. Explore The Broad’s collection and notice which compositions hold your attention. Is it the relationship between figures, the use of open space, the surface or the scale?
Then bring one observation home. You might discover that you prefer a concentrated figure surrounded by space, or that a flowing silhouette works especially well beside the straight lines of your furniture. That response can guide your choice more meaningfully than selecting a photograph by color alone.
The gold appearance in Zublena’s photographs comes from reflective gold-colored body paint on real performers, shaped through pose and controlled light. It does not mean that the photographic print contains physical gold. Consider the photograph as an image with its own tonal relationships, rather than as another metallic finish to match.
A Short Checklist Before You Choose
- Wall: measure the usable area between windows, doors and architectural features.
- Format: compare complete framed dimensions, including any matting.
- Sightlines: test the arrangement from the sofa, dining table, desk and room entrance.
- Light: check morning, afternoon and evening reflections; avoid direct sunlight.
- Materials: compare the image and frame with your actual wood, stone, upholstery and wall color.
- Installation: ask your installer to assess the wall construction and suitable fixings; check any rental or building requirements.
- Feeling: choose the photograph you want to encounter repeatedly.
Human Photography, Imagined Interiors
Zack Zublena’s golden figures begin with real performers, painted by hand, directed, lit and photographed. Discover the human artistry behind the photographs and the creative process.
The rooms illustrated here are interior visualizations, not documented Los Angeles installations. They suggest possible settings. Your home’s dimensions, furnishings, light and daily use should guide the final placement.
You do not need all seven themes. Start with one photograph and one place where you would enjoy seeing it every day. Explore the gold fine art photography collection, or contact Zack Zublena with a straight-on photograph of your wall, its measurements and the works you are considering.
Which image would you like to come home to in Los Angeles?
Written by Zack Zublena