All Dressed Up

I like seeing my pictures all dressed up in their frames. When I first began making my own frames just last year it was a case of economic necessity. Frame prices had gone through the roof. I had the fancy DeWalt 12" compound miter saw from doing the trim work on my studio. I merely needed corner clamps and a fancy $80 trim blade. I began basically by duplicating the floater frames I could no longer afford from my whole sale supplier.

Then it occurred to me that making my own frames set me free to stretch my own canvas to whatever proportions I wanted. Then a chance article in a magazine informed me that artists used to make their own frames and those paintings still around with the original artist made frames are worth a lot more than commercially framed paintings of the same era because the artist painted the frame to match the painting. I was definitely missing something by painting mine simple black like the one on the right.

So sometimes paintings get red frames with purple black interiors like the painting on the left. I had played around with other color schemes for Bridge of Enchantments but simple black just sets off the sky so well. I would find it very hard now to release this part of the process of my paintings. It is like putting just the right dress on your Barbie doll.