Jean Sanchirico website

Jean Sanchirico, who we started representing last fall, has launched her website, www.jeansanchirico.com. You can preview the ones we have, which we've framed, at Jean's page on my site.
6/15/10 update: Jean is no longer represented by us, but is still a great friend (and the best neighbor!), and I urge you to follow her on her site. Her work is shown in our Portfolio, here.

Tom Killion

Was up at Pt Reyes this weekend and had a frame to drop off for Tom Killion, a wonderful printmaker who lives and works up there. If you don't know Tom's work, you're in for a treat. He works in the tradition of Japanese woodblock printmaking, but has been at it long enough to have evolved his own very distinctive style. Tom's extraordinarily well-traveled, and his work reflects his travels. But in recent years it seems he's focused more on California, having produced a book on the High Sierra, The High Sierra of California, and most recently, Mt Tamalpais in Marin County, California. Titled Tamalpais Walking,it's written with the poet Gary Snyder and published by Heyday Books. Tom was generous enough to give me a copy of the book, and it is very beautiful. Check him out at www.TomKillion.com. (There are a couple of Tom's prints shown framed in my portfolio here and here.)

Mural Feeling

We recently framed this Paul Kratter painting for a couple in Washington State, and I wanted to share one aspect in particular that we're emphasizing more and more. It's what Walter Crane, the first president of the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society called "mural feeling" - the effect of a framed easel painting framed and hung to feel like a part of the wall. As Crane wrote, "The easel picture, properly considered and placed in its right relationship to its surroundings, by judicious treatment and hanging, and above all by a certain mural feeling, may be the acme of decoration. It’s relation to a scheme of decoration may be like that of a jewel in a dress." Two keys to achieving this effect are demonstrated by this piece: first, and more obviously, the very architectural feeling of the mortise-and-tenon frame; and second, the hanging system which allows the frame to hang right up against the wall with no gap, and especially importantly, without leaning forward and down the way pictures usually do when hung with a wire. The way we do this is to cut recesses on the back (the "reverse," in framer's parlance) of the frame and attach d-rings in the recesses. There's no wire; the picture hooks are carefully located on the wall so the d-rings hang directly off the hooks. With the d-rings and the picture hooks both in the recesses there's nothing to push the picture and frame away from the wall.

What's so important about this is the effect of unity and the aim of restoring the primal unity of all the arts, but in particular the most divided arts historically speaking, which are painting and architecture.

One other thing about this frame that I particularly like is the flush through tenons, shown here:

Painting trip to Mendocino

I recently took a trip with my friend Richard, also a painter, up to Mendocino and Fort Bragg. We traveled in Artie, our newly acquired RV. Our weather was amazing for January, sunny and warm during the day, cool at night with some fog. The coast line was glorious with one picturesque cove after another. We stopped and painted where we could find a place to pull over and enjoyed having Artie to take a lunch break in or just get warm in at the end of the day. In Fort Bragg we met up with a painting friend, Eleanor, and joined her plein air group to paint at Navarro State Beach on Thursday 1/29. We ended up parking the RV there for two nights, it was so beautiful. The beach was full of driftwood and there were great cliffs to paint in the afternoon light. This photo was taken of me painting at Navarro Beach on Jan. 29th. I love using my portable Easy L easel, small and compact.

Our next adventure in February will take us to the South West. I will take photos and send in some updates on where we are as well as painting spots that we like.