"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.
