Capturing a Home’s Essence

Photographer Amy Barnard’s Passion Project Comes to Life with
PENTIMENTO: A Californian Palazzo

By Leslie Dinaberg | April 9, 2026

A Santa Barbara sandstone colonnade topped with finials mark the entrance to Pentimento. The forecourt is dominated by three garage doors built using re-sawn cedar to resemble carriage doors. The gravel on the driveway evokes a rustic Italian countryside, but also allows water to percolate, a good thing in our dry climate. | Credit: Amy Barnard

The House

And that’s just the location. The home itself is equally dreamy.

“The very first feeling that I had was that it was a California version of The Secret Garden, because at that time, the house was completely covered in flowered vines. When you walk through those two big wooden doors, through the stone wall, you’re walking through a wall of flowers, and it just enveloped me. I was just like, ‘Wow.’ I hadn’t even gotten in the house yet. And I was just like, ‘Where are we, in a magical wonderland?’ It was pretty amazing,” recalls Barnard, an architectural and interior photographer who has had her work showcased in Architectural Digest, Elle Decor, Homes & Gardens, Vogue, Modern Luxury, and California Homes, among others.

Welcome to Pentimento | Credit: Amy Barnard

She had met the owners — Michael Vilkin and Steven Wright — a few times before, casually, but the moment she stepped into their home she was eager to capture its specialness on film. Their tour of the house was filled with lively anecdotes and stories about its history, including that it was standing on the shoulders of their first dream house, a rustic Spanish colonial built between 2006 and 2008 that was destroyed less than a year later, along with 82 other homes, by the Jesusita wildfire.

Pentimento, an Italian word that refers to a painter changing their mind and painting over some of the other work, became an apt title for the rebuilt home, now reenvisioned as a Mediterranean palazzo. As Vilkin wrote in their new book, PENTIMENTO: A Californian Palazzo — which will get a launch party on April 11 at Art & Soul gallery, as part of the programming for Vilkin’s solo art show, PENTIMENTO: Layered Meanings Brought to Life, on view through May 3 — “For us, the name Pentimento embodied everything we felt about our rebuilt, reimagined home — shadows of the past becoming corporeal with the passage of time.”

Bringing the book itself to life is also a story with many layers. When Barnard first saw the house in 2018, she pitched it to Santa Barbara SEASONS Magazine as a feature story. I was the editor at the time, and was equally charmed when I walked through those doors, and jumped at the opportunity to share it with our readers. It was set to be a cover story in early 2019, with the copy set and the pages ready for the printer, when we received word that the new out-of-town owners were shutting down the magazine — not even printing that final issue.

We were all shocked and heartbroken, but Barnard had a vision she couldn’t get out of her head.

The view to the ocean from the bar terrace | Credit: Amy Barnard

The Art Book

“We kind of cried for a few days, had a couple cocktails, and then I was just like, ‘You know what, you guys, there is so much here. There’s so much story, there is so much beauty.’ And I’m like, ‘What would you think about doing an actual, full coffee table book?’ ” said Barnard.

The owner’s suite has a monumental canopy bed and matching curtains, with a painted ceiling and herringbone-pattern wood floor that makes it feels like an old home in Britain. Steven Wright stenciled the ceiling with birds in many colors. | Credit: Amy Barnard

It took a while for Vilkin and Wright to come around to the idea, but they allowed Barnard to do a test shoot of the house on her iPhone and lay it out for them.

“I just had this really strong vision of what I wanted. And as soon as they started seeing things kind of coming together, they’re like, ‘Oh my God. I’ve never seen that room look like that. And I’ve never seen it like that.’ And they’re like, ‘Amy, it’s like I’m looking at a different house.’ Then I’m like, ‘It’s your house.’ And then they started getting excited.”

But it wasn’t smooth sailing from there. As they were planning their first shoot, COVID had other plans. There were months and months of standing apart with masks on, and ultimately the team decided that because entertaining was such a large part of their lifestyle, they needed to include guests in the shots, which meant it had to be postponed a bit longer.

The one upside of the delays was that Barnard got to know her co-authors better over the years, and her knowledge of the house also grew. As Vilkin wrote in the book, “In essence, Pentimento is an album of memories. Much as with a person you’ve known for years, where you see simultaneously who they are now and who they’ve been over time, our house reflects the arc of our lives and the many homes we’ve built together. For us, time loses importance, as we try to keep the past as alive as the present.”

A view of the downstairs looking toward the dining room. To the left, on either side of the mantle are Catholic processionals from Italy, once intended to illuminate a path for the souls of one’s ancestors. Throughout the ground level are what appear to be large stone tiles, but the floor is actually the foundation slab which they cut, stained, grouted, and sealed to resemble stone. | Credit: Amy Barnard

The dense details of the house, captured by Barnard over the course of several years, are well documented. Past the vine covered wall is an entry into a two-story foyer with a sweeping staircase and a wrought-iron railing that spotlights Vilkin’s talent for repurposing, which is showcased throughout the property.

Terra cotta pieces from a 17th-century French country church hang near the ceiling with a skylight that draws your eye upward. A portrait by Vilkin adorns a wall near the staircase; half the paintings in the house are his works.

Michael Vilkin painted the mural above the fireplace in this first floor living room area. | Credit: Amy Barnard

When asked about her favorite views of the home, Barnard points out the spacious first-floor living space, a creative combination of pieces from different periods and various sources. This includes the drawing room, featuring a fireplace in the center, below a musician’s balcony on the east and a large fireplace and an almost 10-foot-tall mural painted above (by Vilkin) to the west. The north side of that main area has a tapestry dining room with stained-glass windows at the highest portion of the 18-foot wall and the south side features the portal bar with spiraling columns and a box bay of floor to ceiling windows overlooking the ocean and a lily pond. Adjacent to the bar is the game room, with French doors out to a terrace facing the ocean.

Vilkin and Wright enjoy decorating with furniture and accessories culled from their travels, antique shops, estate sales, and flea markets sprinkled in with echoes from their previous homes. Every item has a story and Barnard’s goal with the book is to “flow just like you were there with them and they’re giving you a tour of the house.”

With so many incredibly detailed antiques and art pieces to choose from, how did she choose what to include? “I really knew that I wanted everything to be meaningful. And because the house had been lost in the fire and then rebuilt, that was actually one of the things I was very surprised about when I first visited, was that it looks like it has been there for 200 years,” said Barnard.

“It’s a really interesting mix of the ability to see such fine artwork and things that feel like you can sit right next to it on the couch and take it off the wall and hold it. … It’s so architecturally rich and so full of art and antiques and creations that they have done themselves that it’s hard to comprehend that they were able to do this and in the short time that they did. And so, I wanted to know what was really important to them in each room, based on things they were replacing that meant something to them that were lost and they’re bringing back in a new light,” said Barnard.

From each platform, a dolphin-headed fountain pours into the pool, bringing sound and movement to the water, and a meditative white noise to the air. The wood of the trellis survived the Jesusita fire; it’s so thick that the passing flames did little damage. | Credit: Amy Barnard

The Art Show

Artist Michael Vilkin’s solo show PENTIMENTO: Layered Meanings Brought to Life at Art & Soul gallery uses the concept of “pentimento” (the reappearance of earlier layers in a painting as time reveals what was once hidden) as a metaphor for interpreting the human experience through his figurative paintings, as well as abstracted portraits and geometric works. Describing his work, Vilkin said, “I often see meaning and messages in my subjects from their pasts, or from their inner depths, or from their interior lives. I show this in my show via related genres of art.”

He continued, “My realistic figurative art captures what someone looks like, but also who they are inside, or were in their past, with all of these overlapping. … I then have abstracted portraits where someone’s thoughts float around in front of them, or obscure things in their lives, or blur how clearly they want to be seen. … I also have geometric abstracts in which I hide a word or phrase since we don’t always reveal to ourselves what we truly believe.”

On view through May 3, Vilkin’s exhibit has several cool programs associated with it, including the book launch of Pentimento: A California Palazzo, a gorgeous coffee table–style book collaboration of the remarkable home of Vilkin and his partner, Steven Wright, with acclaimed architectural photographer Amy Barnard, on Saturday, April 11, 5-7 p.m.

Also on the PENTIMENTO programming schedule is an artist conversation with Vilkin and special guests Peter Schlueer and Joel Chauran, on Friday, April 17, 5-7 p.m.; and a very special evening of food, drinks, and laughs with comedian Wendy Liebman on Saturday, April 18, at 8 p.m.

Art & Soul is located at 1323 State Street. See artandsoulsb.com