Revealing Patterns

Design industry entrepreneurs Serena Dugan and Sarah Von Dreele bring their artistic visions to new home collections

Above, from left: Serena Dugan and Sarah Von Dreele

By Maile Pingel

After building successful design companies, Serena Dugan, half of lifestyle brand Serena & Lily, and Sarah Von Dreele, founder of consultancy Onethread, have both built new futures by returning to their original passion: painting.

“I’d been away from art for a long time, and it was something I just needed to pursue,” says Dugan. “As a creative, you’re pulled into your work because of your love of the craft. But if you start down a retail path, it becomes a business endeavor.” She continues: “I was being creative at Serena & Lily but needed to get back to my roots as an artist.” After leaving the company in 2017, Dugan devoted herself to painting, which she’d studied in college, and undertook an artist residency at Chateau d’Orquevaux in France.

In fact, the more Dugan painted, the more she wanted to paint. “My paintings are explorations of composition, form, and layering,” she says. “I typically use acrylic paints on canvas but have incorporated bits of coarse textiles like burlap to vary weight and texture. I also love watercolor on paper for quick gestural marks that reference my textiles.” Dugan’s studio on a Sausalito pier provides limitless inspiration. “It has incredible character, with lots of natural light and airflow,” she says of the space.

Dugan’s paintings Kiss the Sky (left) and Josephine; Dugan at work in the studio. Photos courtesy of Serena Dugan Studio.

“I typically use acrylic paints on canvas but have incorporated bits of coarse textiles like burlap to vary weight and texture. I also love watercolor on paper for quick gestural marks that reference my textiles.”

Painting also brought Dugan back to fabric and wallpaper production, and she launched Serena Dugan Studio in 2019. Her Condesa print, which was introduced in 2020 and will be produced in new colorways this fall, was the first to pull directly from her paintings—specifically, works she created after a trip to Mexico City. (Those paintings also led to a rug collaboration with Erik Lindstrom last year.) Dugan sees her latest collection, India Block Print, as a melding of her two passions, painting and pattern making. “I wanted to emphasize the painterliness of block printing,” she says. “It’s my aesthetic but the block printer’s technique, and it feels like a true marriage between the two.”

A sofa swathed in Dugan’s print Oletta, inspired by a hand-sketched motif. From the new India Block Print collection, the Khiva wallpaper in French Blue. Dugan’s Condesa paperweave wallcovering in Chalk and Indigo. Photos by Robert Divers Herrick, courtesy of Serena Dugan Studio.

For Von Dreele, picking up a paintbrush again in 2015 catalyzed a similar life shift. After putting her daughter to bed, she would work at the dining room table. “Once I started painting, I just kept painting,” she recalls. And what she witnessed in her work was a transformation. At first her paintings were “tight, rigid, and prickly,” an expression of a difficult phase in her personal life, but they began to morph into more magical, healing expressions. “Eventually, lightness and fluidity started to come into the works,” she explains. “I could turn off my head and just paint.”

At a friend’s encouragement, and with advice from industry connections (she had worked with brands like Knoll and Carnegie Fabrics), Von Dreele decided to turn her paintings into textiles. She turns the completed paintings over to specialists, who convert the artworks into appropriately scaled repeats for fabrics. “I rely on people with their own expertise,” she says. “They see my paintings in different ways. Sometimes I think they won’t be able to make it work, but they always do!”

Von Dreele’s latest collection, Intersections, uses geometric patterns in reference to choices we make in relationships, and titling her designs after friends and family serves as a tribute to those she loves: Little Deb (a series of arches) and Seher (a grid of rectangles) are named for friends from her alma mater, the Rhode Island School of Design, and Robert (an abstract Greek key-inspired design) alludes to her grandfather, the “biggest cheerleader” of her decision to go to art school.

Little Deb (left and center) and Robert from Intersections, Von Dreele’s new collection of wallpapers.

Whether in her home studio in Connecticut or at her beach house in New Jersey, Von Dreele immerses herself in painting. “I paint in gouache, which is a water-based paint with a greater range of opacity than watercolor. You can also really mix the colors with precision.” She adds of her visual inspiration, “Over the past two years, I have been painting more from within, although I’m sure that what I internalize visually each day is part of the picture.”

“I paint in gouache, which is a water-based paint with a greater range of opacity than watercolor. You can also really mix the colors with precision.”

Von Dreele brushes gouache onto watercolor paper; her paintings Avery (top) and Rachel.

What unites Dugan and Von Dreele is that they operate from a place of discovery. While designing the interiors of her East Coast home on New York’s Shelter Island, Dugan discovered gaps in her collections, which she remedied with new patterns and colorways. “Home is part refuge, part incubator,” she says. For Von Dreele, who also draws on domestic inspiration, it’s all about evolving. “As artists we need to look for what’s new,” she says. “And there’s something freeing about developing work that comes from within.”

The two artists and designers also share a mutual admiration. “I have great respect for Serena—she’s an artist at heart,” says Von Dreele. “She uses the palette and the canvas. She is always finding something new.” And notes Dugan of Von Dreele’s work, “Sarah’s textiles are artworks in their own right. I so appreciate the integrity she brings to her craft.”

Serena Dugan Studio and Sarah Von Dreele are available through Hewn. Dugan’s collection for Erik Lindstrom Rugs is available through the Natalie Mize Collective.

Revealing Patterns

By Maile Pingel

“I typically use acrylic paints on canvas but have incorporated bits of coarse textiles like burlap to vary weight and texture. I also love watercolor on paper for quick gestural marks that reference my textiles.”

“I paint in gouache, which is a water-based paint with a greater range of opacity than watercolor. You can also really mix the colors with precision.”

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