On Saturday afternoon, August 22, I’ll be giving a talk titled “Completing the Window: A Frame Maker’s Approach to Framing Landscape Paintings.”
Paul Kratter, “Valley Ranch Near Half Moon Bay”
It’s a truism that a frame should complement the picture that’s in it. But what does that mean? How should we think about the frame, and how can we design frames to successfully complement pictures?
As a culture, we seem to have lost our understanding of the relationship between frames and pictures. My fifty years of framing have taught me many lessons regarding that relationship. Especially fascinating has been the more than two decades of running a gallery of landscape paintings, framing every piece that’s displayed, and witnessing again and again the transformative effect of a truly complementary frame.
That experience has also given me a unique perspective on the fate of frames over the past few centuries. For deep cultural reasons reflecting our relationships to pictures, the art of the picture frame has become debased and degraded, with the inevitable consequence that it has frequently failed pictures, thus compelling many artists, galleries, collectors and even museums to ignore and abandon the frame. While frames have, in the words of frame historian Lynn Roberts “suffered exile and destruction,” I’ve witnessed again and again how frames not only enhance landscape paintings but complete them as windows in our homes, windows on the land.
The talk will be here at the Gallery at 2:00, with questions afterward and a tour of the shop thrown in.
The event is free, but space is limited, so please email us to reserve your seat.
—Tim Holton
