Thursday, July 12, 2012

When is it finished?

"Poppies and Lupines"  Watercolor on paper, float mounted onto a rag board with a floating mat.


When is a painting finished?  

     That seems to be a difficult question for me personally.  My art tends to be finished when I frame it and I can't get to it to change it easily.  I am always seeing that one thing, what ever it may be, that bothers me after I sit with a painting for a while.  I have an image in my mind that usually evolves with the painting, but then it is never perfect or my idea of good enough.  I have to fix it  and keep fixing it.  That can ruin a watercolor painting and create hours of additional work on an acrylic canvas.  

    The odd thing is, though that often when I put a mat or frame around a work, it changes how I view the work and settles down the unease I can feel about my art.  It can also help with a composition that is fighting me and not balanced in the right way.  The frame or mat creates more of a boundary than plain paper and I can see what needs to be corrected easily.  Framing for me stops the fussing.  I feel like the effort of framing my work adds a value to my art that I may not give it on its own.  I enjoy seeing my work on the wall and feeling like I have finished it.