At least they stack nicely
We are working on some renovations on our house. These upgrades involve emptying the room where Michele Bledsoe and I store our art.
Paintings can be fragile things, easy to scratch, dent, puncture, or rip if you are not careful. I believe the best way to store a painting is to have it hanging on the wall, and believe me when I say our house is lined practically floor to ceiling with art. This is what happens when two compulsive painters get married, and they have lots of artistic friends to trade works with.
But in the end there is a limited amount of wall space, so the majority of my art gets stacked out of the way of life. This home improvement project we are working on required moving my paintings out of their secure location.
It didn’t occur to me to take a “Before” picture. We had sixteen years worth of mostly my paintings lined neatly up by size, front to front, back to back, with dividers of cardboard and foam core for extra safety. They were elevated off the floor on strips of lumber I cut for just that purpose.
I was so used to this system it didn’t really occur to me how many paintings there were, until I had to pull them out.
This isn’t even all of them, just a few of the stacks that have been distributed throughout the house. One thing we are doing is taking this opportunity to do an inventory: documenting the titles, medium, and size of each work. Once we get this massive update done, I intend to keep it current with my new works, but we will see how that goes.
Ironically, seeing how many paintings I have, and scrambling to find a place to put them, makes me want to paint even more, on even larger canvases.
THE REMODERN REVIEW 
Wow. I know what you mean. This past weekend I had some people over to “shop” for a painting, and we uncovered too much… I was cringing at the way they picked through stuff—paintings sticking together, and then being unstuck and losing chips of paint. I was pleased to have them over, but wished they would hurry up and leave the paintings alone. I kept fearing corners of frames breaking through other pieces, “hearing” rips and tears, imagining the worst… I scurried them up the stairs, and realized for once and for all that I will never sell paintings until I hire a manager who has no interest in making money.
Also, I had the same feeling about painting more and more and on bigger canvases. Strange…
We must be tapped into the same insanity-my home is chock full of paintings, I need to make more!
Time to move into a bigger house! LOl
I have a similar affliction with my photography. Luckily my “inventory” that is not on the walls only fills one walk in closet.
Just like in “Jaws”…we need a bigger boat 🙂
Time to move to a bigger house! LOL
I have a similar affliction with my photography. Luckily my “inventory” not hanging on the walls is confined to one, very full, walk in closet. Half of it is not even in frames.
Holy Smokes! I didn’t realize you lived in a consignment store sponsored by Lutherans.
I’ve taken to pulling my frames off of pieces I know won’t be circulating any time soon, saves space
That’s my life, one big consignment shop 🙂
[…] one occasion I can remember doing it. I was reminded of the circumstances recently while we were working on some home renovations, and I had to move 16 years worth of […]
[…] of being a compulsive painter who likes to work on medium/large paintings (see 2016 entry STUDIO: Sixteen Years of Paintings.) If not sold, on display, or on the walls of my own house, where can I keep all the paintings I […]