For her entire life, Susan Burger has been obsessed with making things more beautiful. Formally trained as an interior designer, and now a practicing landscape designer as well as an accomplished photographer, she undoubtedly has an eye for art. 

For Susan, art is not only something she couldn’t live without, but also as an essential element of her home’s design. Walking us through her Brentwood, California penthouse, she demonstrated how her art collection interplays with her aesthetic vision for the apartment. “It’s a small space, and I didn’t want anything to stand out too much. I just wanted it to be soft.” While she admits her second home on the coast has more pops of color, for this space, she embraced a more monochromatic palette. “Sometimes after coming back in from the world, you want something subdued,” she says.

For Ariya Watty, art is more than just a decorative element in her home: it tells the story of her life. “For me, art is like a record of all my personal history. All the places I’ve been to, all the people I’ve met,” she says. In fact, much of the art that Ariya has purchased from Saatchi Art is inspired by her travels around the globe—from South America to Asia. As she describes it, “The approach is, ‘What work is going to create that feeling in me that I had when in that place?’” Channeling these memories through artwork has had a “grounding effect” on the executive assistant, who is constantly on-the-go. “When I look at something that I’ve purchased, it brings me back to that place and that time…which I really like.”