Seven Energies of Gold: Choosing Art for Your Chicago Home
In a Chicago home, artwork enters into a conversation with architecture. A brick wall in a converted loft, the window rhythm of a vintage apartment, or the clean lines of a lakefront condominium can each change how a photograph feels. The right choice begins with understanding the room—and what you want to experience when you spend time there.
From a Lincoln Park living room to a West Loop loft, a Hyde Park study or a Lakeview apartment, gold fine art photography can introduce warmth and a distinct human presence. Its impact depends on more than color: composition, framed dimensions, viewing distance and light all matter.
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 entirely 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 photography in a Chicago home.
Choosing Art for Chicago Interiors: Work with the Architecture
Begin with a straight-on photograph of your intended wall. Measure the usable area between doors, windows, shelving, trim and other architectural features. Mark the complete proposed framed dimensions with paper or removable tape suitable for the finish. Include any matting and the frame itself.
In an older apartment, a picture rail, fireplace or built-in cabinet may establish the room’s visual structure. In a contemporary condominium, the relationship between a solid wall and broad windows may matter more. Let these features guide the placement without assuming the artwork must match the building’s period.
The Chicago Architecture Center’s Buildings of Chicago resource offers a useful starting point for exploring the city’s architectural variety. At home, bring that curiosity down to the scale of your own room: which lines, materials and proportions are already doing the most visual work?
Check the proposed wall in daylight and with your evening lamps. Consider how the room is used during different seasons, especially if much of your time at home is spent after dark. Avoid direct sunlight and discuss glazing, reflections and lighting with your framer.
1. Grounding
Golden Lotus Fold: Create a Calm Point of Arrival
An entrance often carries the practical demands of coming home: coats, shoes, bags and the route into the rest of the apartment. A photograph can give that transition a deliberate visual focus without adding more clutter.
Golden Lotus Fold concentrates the figure inward. Its association here with the root chakra comes from that sense of containment and stability.
For a narrow Lakeview hallway or a bungalow entrance, choose a format that leaves space around the frame. Position it where an open door or coat rack will not obscure the image. If the entrance has no suitable wall, consider a reading corner where its gathered form can be enjoyed at close range.
Ask yourself: Where can my home offer its first moment of calm?
2. Creativity
The Thinker Reimagined: Give a Loft or Workspace Its Own Rhythm
In a West Loop loft, exposed structure and long sightlines can make a workspace feel part of everything around it. Art can help define a particular corner without dividing the room physically.
The curved silhouette of The Thinker Reimagined introduces movement alongside straight architectural lines. Here it accompanies the sacral theme of creativity.
Try the photograph beside your desk, then assess it from the dining table and sofa. A print that works beautifully at arm’s length may feel too small across an open room. Choose according to the place where you most want to encounter it.
The Design Museum of Chicago offers another avenue for exploring visual decisions and everyday design. Bring one question to your own workspace: how do the objects around me influence where my attention goes?
Ask yourself: Does this corner leave room for imagination as well as work?
3. Confidence
I Crown Myself: Establish Presence Beside Strong Architectural Lines
A room with a fireplace, substantial woodwork or a wide skyline view already has a strong point of interest. The photograph you add should form a considered relationship with that feature.
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 a solid wall above a restrained console or a position beside an architectural feature. Avoid defaulting to the space above a working fireplace; discuss heat and placement conditions before installing a photographic print there.
For a local architectural reference, explore the Frank Lloyd Wright Trust’s account of the Robie House, which describes the relationship between architecture, furnishings and ornament as an integrated whole. Apply that attention to relationships when comparing frames and nearby materials.
Ask yourself: Can this photograph make a clear statement while belonging to the room?
4. Connection
An Inner Connection: Bring Warmth to a Shared Living Room
When your living room becomes the setting for long evenings indoors, its atmosphere matters beyond the first impression. Art should remain enjoyable from the seats people actually use.
The seated golden figure with joined palms invites an inward reading, associated here with the heart theme of compassion. Against darker upholstery or wood, it can establish a luminous focus. In a lighter room, its surrounding tones can create a quieter arrangement.
For a Lincoln Park sitting room or a shared apartment living area, check the view from the chair opposite the artwork. Nearby lamps, shelving and furniture should support the composition without crowding it.
The Smart Museum of Art’s collections offer opportunities for reflection and conversation through art. At home, begin with your own response to the figure. Explore Zack’s Golden Balance collection for further contemplative compositions.
Ask yourself: What would this image invite someone sitting here to notice?
5. Expression
I Refuse to Perform: Make a Personal Choice Beyond the Room’s Style
A vintage apartment can hold contemporary photography. An industrial loft can hold a contemplative figure. Your home’s architectural category does not need to determine every artistic choice.
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 or a wall visible from your favorite chair. Test whether the image matters to you independently of the frame, furniture or trend surrounding it.
Explore the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago’s collection to encounter different artistic voices. Notice which approaches remain with you afterward. Such encounters can clarify your preferences without prescribing what belongs in your home.
Ask yourself: Would I choose this photograph even if nobody else saw it?
6. Intuition
Golden Ascension: Choose for Daylight and Evening Light
A lakefront condominium with broad windows and an apartment facing a neighboring building present different lighting conditions. Neither requires placing a photograph on the brightest wall.
Golden Ascension accompanies the third-eye theme of perception. Its flowing silhouette gives you a reason to return to the image.
Try it in a bedroom sitting area or a dry dressing space. Check its visibility from your usual position with daylight, then with the lamps you use after dark. Consider the direction of reflections as well as the amount of light.
The bathroom shown above is an interior visualization. Steam, splashes and humidity make suitability dependent on the print, framing and room conditions. A dry adjacent space may offer a more suitable setting; discuss bathroom placement with your framer.
Ask yourself: Where can I enjoy this work clearly at the times I am actually home?
7. Unity
The Art of Connection: Choose Together for a Shared Space
For a shared Chicago home, begin by choosing independently, then compare the photographs each person keeps returning to. Discuss the image before debating its size or placement.
The Art of Connection brings two figures into one golden composition. Associated here with the crown theme of unity, it leaves room for a meaning rooted in your own relationship.
Above a bed, include the headboard, bedside lights and complete framed dimensions in your mockup. For a dining room, assess the image from seated positions as well as the entrance.
In a larger room, compare a single photograph with the possibilities described in Zack’s guide to diptychs and triptychs. Include the spaces between panels when calculating the total width.
Ask yourselves: What does this image mean to each of us?
Developing Your Eye in Chicago
Explore the Art Institute of Chicago’s collection with one question in mind: what makes me stop and look? It might be a figure’s gesture, the space around a subject, a contrast between surfaces or the balance of a composition.
Bring that observation home. A figure can introduce a curved silhouette beside angular furniture. A concentrated composition can give a busy room a place for the eye to settle. Choose through those relationships rather than through color matching 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.
A Short Checklist Before You Choose
- Architecture: identify the windows, trim, built-ins and other features that define the wall.
- Format: measure complete framed dimensions, including matting.
- View: test placement from your usual seat and the room entrance.
- Light: check daylight and evening reflections; avoid direct sunlight.
- Materials: compare frame samples beside your actual brick, wood, upholstery and wall color.
- Installation: have your installer assess the wall construction and suitable fixings; check building or rental requirements.
- Feeling: choose the image you want to see 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 Chicago installations. They suggest possible settings. Your home’s dimensions, furnishings, light and daily use should guide the final arrangement.
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 Chicago?
De Zack Zublena