Ronald Layman is a fourth-generation decorative painter. The family trade starts in 1890 with his great-grandfather. His grandfather and father kept it in churches, historic buildings, and working interiors. He opened his own studio in 1996.
He learned marbling and wood graining from the late Mike Macneil, studied murals in France, and trained in Italian plaster and scagliola in Italy. The work now sits in private houses and in rooms that carry a public name: the Kennedy Center, the U.S. Department of the Treasury, the IMF, Hollywood Casino, and commissions across the country.
He also teaches. The Faux School in Frederick — and classes in Florida, California, and Italy — is the same set of methods used on the job, taught in the open.
The standard is simple. If you can see it is fake, it is not finished.