Probably the only downside to learning how to make beautiful frames is that one becomes horribly picky about the pictures one encounters throughout life.
Now that I understand that ‘less is more’ and that a crisp, clean surround works brilliantly for pretty much every kind of artwork, I get frustrated when I see lovely images in fussy, heavy or over-decorated frames.
It has taken me nearly two years to settle down with the colours and shapes that I choose for my own pieces of art – when I first started out I was having fun playing with a variety of wacky colours and frames. Sometimes I still do, but my default setting has changed to the best quality mounts and mouldings I can afford, and the plainer the better.
One of my betes noir is the brown edge on an old mount board. It offends my aesthetic sensibilities to the point where I can’t look at the image without being distracted by the tatty, faded surrounds.
A first world problem, absolutely, and one that is easily remedied by dint of cutting a nice, fresh, new Arqadia ‘white core’ conservation mount board which won’t do the dirty on me and go that murky tea colour over time.
Here’s one I made earlier (with apologies to Blue Peter).
Tilly