Framing It!

When you consider the amount of time we spend painting something I have to admit, at least in my case, how little time we spend getting the right frame for that very same painting. Its not that any old thing will do, it won't, but possibly we are so close to an item that, well, we don't see the forest for the trees.

Chinese Dreamscape framed

For me, this is probably the best painting I have ever done. I hope there will be more and even better ones in the future but for now, I was able to capture a kind of depth and exciting foreground as never before. For several weeks now it has sat on an easel in the garage so I can see it whenever I go out the back door.

The time had come. I would hang it in my bathroom and it needed a frame.

When my son and I repainted the bathroom picking a color was hard because of the deep 1950's burgundy tile trim. It makes other colors look bad. My son said lets try green, and a strange green it was. I wasn't convinced yet somehow it worked and its really the perfect color for many paintings. A creamy white was used on the cabinets, ceiling and trim. The hunt was on.

I am very fortunate to have a "cost" effective frame shop not even a mile away and they are always having a sale. When I went in there were several frames that would fit the painting for only $20. But they were gold and I was sick of gold or silver so started looking at dark wood frames with maybe a flash of gold. The Asian owner, probably about my age, disappeared as I poked around. He returned with something behind his back. "I think I have the frame for you. It's only $20 so you decide," he said.

I hate ornate frames. They are fine at the Met, the Louvre or the LA County Museum of Art but not in my home. He put the painting inside the frame and realized he was right. I was stunned. The frame just disappeared and the painting shimmered. "OK," I said. "You are right." And, he was.

He scensed in a heartbeat what I could not. I've always said that if you want to bring out a color use another color to mask what you don't want to see and to bring out the one(s) you do. By using a white frame the greens, blues and oranges loom up around the whites and creams creating the perfect, at least in my mind, dreamscape.

The next time you frame your art, listen carefully to someone else. They just might see what you cannot.