I remember my first home, mostly because of it's bare walls. After graduating from college with my BA degree, I had about six paintings, plus the one I had given Rahul as a birthday present, and a ton of clay work that I had no possible way of displaying. I remember the pressure as a young couple of having art work on the walls to make our space into a home. Every Crate & Barrel catalog and Pottery Barn store had things we could simply not afford in those early years. We bought cheap Ikea frames and stuffed whatever finished work I had from my college days into them and slowly filled up the spaces. Later, I began to box frame all my canvases and that took away the need for professional framing, making it cost effective to hang up more work. And although there is no substitute for well framed work, this was the next best thing, especially since an empty wall was, well, just, simply unacceptable.
Over the years my way of creating and presenting art has changed. The art I enjoy looking at has changed too. And all this makes sense because I am not the same person I was at twenty-one. I feel really lucky that I don't have to live with the same work that I had on my walls all those years ago, because, while that was honest and truthful to my taste and mind-space at the time, it no longer holds the same weight for me now. Fresh work always helped clarify my point of view, changed the way I looked at something, affected the objects and people around it by activating the space, and it showed me in a concrete way how I was and still am evolving as a person and an artist. There have been several times when simply moving some paintings around made me feel fresh, and my living space feel new. This made me wonder, how many people were living with art that they had collected years and years ago? Whether received as a gift, or bought from a small village in Bali, at a bargain price or at a museum store? Or maybe people were living with it because more money was spent on framing it than the cost of the painting itself!
I'm going to share a tip with you, because I don't think anyone should live with art that holds no value to them. Take those paintings out of their frames. Save your frames, and put new work into them. Ask artists if they have work to fit your expensive frames, or even better commission them to make you a painting that holds value for you. Use your frames to accentuate architectural details of interest in your home instead, or use them to frame wall sculpture. Collage your frames to make interesting installations on your walls. There are many things that one can do with pieces of wood that don't involve holding up a piece of cloth you no longer find value in seeing. Ask me, I know all about it!
