After the hurricane hit, Brian Nadurak, 48, was left with only swimming trunks and a pair of flip-flops. The "hurricane," as he refers to it, wasn't Katrina or Gustav but a disastrous second divorce after less than a year of marriage. His ex, never fond of her husband's taste, had banished the furniture and accessories he brought to the marriage. Mr. Nadurak, however, had managed to keep some things out of sight – and safe.

"I had stuff squirreled away [at a friend's house] that just didn't fit my prior lifestyle," Mr. Nadurak explains. "So when the hurricane happened, I went out there and got the stuff I needed."

"Need" is a relative term. He had a table and chairs, but pretty much nothing else to furnish his new loft apartment in South Side on Lamar; the rest he had to replace.

"There was a guy in the building who was an artist, and he made these steel platform frames for beds, so he made one for me. That's how I ended up having a bed," he remembers.

Mr. Nadurak turned the personal setback of his failed marriage into the chance to redefine his style.

The first thing he bought was an African mask from Millennium 2000 Gallery, a shop of African arts and artifacts run by Karen Manning at South Side. He hung the mask above his bed.

In fact, Mr. Nadurak bought several pieces from Ms. Manning's gallery, including several fetishes from the African Dan tribe.

Fetishes are statues or objects believed to ward off evil spirits – particularly helpful, he thought, after a marriage break-up.

"People either like it or they don't like it at all," he says of visitors to his loft. "There's no middle ground. They'll say, 'Wow! What's up with all the African art?' But I find there's strength in the pieces."

He remembers buying one particularly intense-looking mask from Millennium when Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price was in the store.

"I just liked it and John Wiley Price was like, man, the fact that you like that, it's really super strong to have that around you and not mind its intensity," he recalls.

Mr. Nadurak, originally from Canada, is a painter known for his intense style, in which slashes of color intersect on canvas with words and collage. He graduated first in his class from the Arts Center College of Design in Pasadena, Calif., and Stan Richards, founder of the advertising agency the Richards Group, recruited him to Dallas in 1986. He's the creative director of Click Here, the Richards Group's interactive ad agency. Mr. Nadurak also cofounded the Heroes Foundation, which focuses on organizing team sports for at-risk inner-city kids. He says it has become the largest charitable, inner-city-children's sport program in the country.

Mr. Nadurak also shows his abstract expressionist works at the Cedars Art Gallery. A winter show of his work at South Side's Janette Kennedy Gallery sold out.

"In the future, I'm going to be in the Tate. That's my goal," he says with characteristic bravado.

Mr. Nadurak thinks of his home as eclectic, but he wants it to be cozy and inviting for guests, especially his 12-year-old son, Mac, who visits frequently.

"I think of this space the way I think a painting should be. It should feel safe, where people can go to feel comfortable." The loft is his own refuge from the storms of life.