Arriving at the home of the actress, filmmaker and poet Greta Bellamacina and her husband, Scottish contemporary artist Robert Montgomery, is a bit like emerging from the back of the wardrobe into Narnia. ‘The house is very hidden!’ Robert wrote in an email. ‘To the right of number 25, there’s a wooden gate and a lane that looks like it goes nowhere. Just follow that.’ Pulling up at the end of a cul-de-sac, I find said gate, tucked between two 1960s semi-detached houses. After a short walk, as if out of nowhere, the lawn of a perfect Georgian house unspools, obscured from the surrounding roads by trees. It is like coming across a wedding cake in the middle of a conference centre. There is a swimming pool, with striped cushions and parasols, reminiscent of a Slim Aarons photograph. A small outdoor stage is flanked by two white rose trees in pots. Most striking of all is a poem in huge white letters, 2.5 metres high and six metres wide, mounted on a dark frame that blends into the trees behind it so that it appears to be floating:
You are still alive on this hurtling
Blue-skied planet spinning into a fragile unknowable future
The future is a cattle prod / The future is a dream of love
The piece is by Robert, who is well well known for his monumental installations of poetry, sometimes made into sculptures and illuminated with LED lights or fire, at other times painted on the side of buildings or printed on billboards. He also works in acrylic on large canvases, many of which hang in the house he shares with Greta and their sons, Lorca, eight, and Lucian, five.
The couple bought the house three-and-a-half years ago. It was in a state of genteel decay, having not been fully lived in for decades. ‘Robert was thinking this is the dream place to have an art studio, while I was thinking this is a dream film location,’ says Greta, who did indeed use it as the set for the recently released Tell That to the Winter Sea, which she both co-wrote and starred in. ‘We are drawn to things with faded glamour – once grand things that are a little bit damaged.’
They had decided to leave London to gain more space for their growing family. ‘We wanted to find somewhere on the edge of London, where we could scurry away to make things, but still have the city close by,’ says Greta. Inside, the rooms are now decorated with bright decorum. ‘The English country-side, by way of an Italian palazzo,’ explains Greta, who was born in Hampstead and raised in Camden, as one of five siblings born to artistic parents with an Italian heritage.
‘When we bought the house, it was lockdown and we were pining for Italy. We didn’t spend huge amounts of money on the furniture, but we invested in paint,’ she says, gesturing to the verdigris-coloured dining room. This connects to the children’s playroom, painted in a striking shade of pink borrowed from designer Susie Cave (founder of fashion brand ‘The Vampire’s Wife’) who, along with her musician husband Nick, has been a long-time supporter of Greta’s poetry. ‘Susie showed me some pictures of her house, which is painted in an amazing luminous colour she invented. Slightly lilac, it glows as if it has a hidden light in it. She kindly gave me her secret code for it at Paint & Paper Library.’