This is a painting of mine from a number of years back, a 16″ by 20″ canvas titled With All Possibility. For the past several years it has hung in a back room of my studio but has remained a favorite of mine. It’s part of a group of paintings of mine that is often referred to as the Dark Work which refers to the dark ground on which they’re painted and deep and dark primary colors of the surface. This work started in the months after 9/11 as we struggled as a nation to find footing. This work was my emotional response at the time. The work never gained the favor of my more typical work but I have always believed that it has something real in it, something that expresses a base emotion with genuine truth.
That’s why I probably give this work a go in the studio every so often, painting new pieces to see if I still see something in this style. This particular painting was part of such a revisit back in 2007. I thought at the time that this was a strong piece of work and, having had it around for a few years now, still believe so. But it never raised any interest in its limited visits to a couple of galleries so I tried to figure out if there was fault in it.
Sometimes this is the case in some paintings, where I will have strong feelings over a piece that just doesn’t click with anyone. I may be seeing something that is not visible in the surface of the work– an inspiration or even my own memory of the painting process– which affects my judgement of the piece. After some time, I will begin to see this and begin to see that my judgement of it was tainted, that I was not seeing the painting as it really was and, as a result, was missing real flaws in it. Flaws that deprived it of the life that I thought I was seeing when in fact I was only sensing my memory of the creation of it. A big difference.
But looking at this piece, I still felt there was something real, something strong. The forms, the colors, the textures– it all seemed to work in a rhythm of simple harmony with focus and depth. Everything I look for in my work. What was wrong?
It didn’t take long to figure it out. It was my presentation of the work. The frame. At the time of this piece, I tried a very short-lived experiment with some gold-leafed frames, wide flat mouldings with a more classic style. I was trying to have the frame add weight to my work and it was a huge mistake. It was not in any kind of sync with my work and it even went against my own personal rule which always has the edges of my work, on paper or on canvas, exposed. I have only had a few pieces over the many years where the edges are covered and even those few still nag at me.
But here was this piece in this frame that would be more suitable for a more traditional pastoral scene in oil, its edges trapped under the gold-leafed rim. It was all wrong. How could I have not seen this long ago?
I unframed it and I immediately felt so much better, like a weight was lifted off my chest. Liberated from the golden bindings of that frame, the painting seemed as strong and as vibrant as I had thought . I had been trying to present it as something that it was not and in the process had shaded its reality from the viewer. It now sits without a frame and, if it ever leaves the studio, will have a proper presentation– edges exposed and ready to fly free.
Redtree Times 