ABOUT JOHN
JOHN ISHMAEL
Artist/ Interior Designer
John’s painting career has spanned 4 decades. He joined the Nandina Atlanta team as an owner and lead designer with over 20 years of experience in the field of interior design. John holds a Bachelor of Science degree from the Georgia Institute of Technology. He is known for his creative use of textiles in his designs.
“Color, texture, light, and emotion have always fascinated me — in the most elemental sense. These aren’t just tools that I utilize, They are the language I think in first. What’s interesting is that the same characteristics that drive a painting are the ones that make a room feel inevitable. My inspiration and love for design grew naturally from my love of art, not as a separate pursuit, but as a natural extension of the same instincts. One led to the other without asking permission.
I’ve never been able to look at a blank surface without seeing it as a conversation waiting to happen. Not a problem to solve but a conversation. There’s a difference. Problems have answers. Conversations have perspective and momentum.
That path took shape over more than twenty years in interior design — including owning a custom workroom where I lived inside the details of draperies, slipcovers, and furniture built from scratch. Fabric taught me something that art had already suggested: that material has personality. The way a textile drapes or catches light — that’s not background information. It is probably why textiles keep showing up as a throughline in much of what I do in design and painting. Patterns show up in canvas, on walls, windows, and furniture in my design.
When I work with clients, I see myself as a conduit for their creation. The finished space should always reflect their personality — their weight, their light, their texture. A painting of mine is a mirror of who I am. A room I design for someone else is a mirror of who they are. I hold both as equally serious responsibilities and don’t blur the line between them.
Most of what I do starts with weight. Where does the eye want to land first, and what happens when I refuse to let it? I’m interested in that small tension — the fraction of a second where attention is pulled in two directions at once and the viewer must make a choice. That choice is where meaning lives. Rule of thirds, golden ratios, figure to ground relationships — I know these the way a musician knows scales. A starting point, not a destination. You learn the grammar so you can speak the language when it matters.
At home, my husband Troy and I are constantly mid-project in our 120-year-old Victorian in Atlanta’s West End — four dogs underfoot, another wall under consideration. I call myself a serial renovator, which is just another way of saying I can’t stop seeing potential in a space. That restlessness isn’t separate from the art. It is the art.
I’m not trying to make work that explains itself on first contact. I’d rather something sit with you for a minute, shift a little, then settle into a shape you didn’t expect. If there’s a consistent intention behind anything I make, it’s that: patience rewarded."
- John Ishmael
”I have been creating pieces of art as long as I can remember, sketching, doodling and painting. I took painting lessons from an artist when I was 12 and never stopped painting. My art teacher in high school was wonderfully encouraging and I never looked back.”