Hung the small one in the hallway where only I walk past it
Small thing, but it took me three weeks to do it. There is a canvas from last winter, 40 by 50, nothing special on paper, the kind I usually stack against the wall and forget. I put it up in the hallway between the kitchen and the studio, no frame, just two nails. Nobody sees it there except me, and I see it maybe twenty times a day now, at bad angles, in bad light.
It looks worse than I remembered. Also better. Both at once, which I take as a good sign, because the pieces I am sure about at first glance are usually the ones that turn out thin.
For years I would not have done this. Work that goes to the gallery gets photographed and discussed and then it is gone, and work that stays gets hidden in the rack. A painting that lives with you is a different kind of test, and I had been avoiding it. Naja. Now it is up there being difficult and I have to look at it while the kettle boils.
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the two nails no frame bit is the whole thing for me. framing is a way of asking permission, and hanging it raw in a hallway nobody else uses is the opposite of that. i've a proof of a heron gone wrong hung above the kettle at home that i see forty times a day and it has taught me more than any piece i've ever sold. bad angles and bad light are a fierce honest critic. the worse and better at the same time is exactly right too, the ones you're sure of straight away are usually the ones that were easy, and easy is a liar.
The heron above the kettle is the real argument here. A hallway is still a corridor, you can walk past a hallway thing. A kettle gives you no exit, you stand there waiting for water and the work has you cornered. That is a harsher studio than most of us build on purpose.
I half agree on easy being a liar, though. Sometimes the thing comes fast because it was already finished in your head for a year and you just finally did it. But you are right that the fast ones rarely teach you anything, and the ones that fight back tend to have something in them.
The kettle one I have to try. You are right that the corridor lets you off. Standing there with nothing to do but wait is a different kind of looking, and a harder one to lie to yourself in.
And ja, the fast ones. What I would say is that a thing finished in the head for a year is not really fast, it only arrives fast. The work was going on the whole time, just quietly. What I distrust is the fast one that also felt easy while I was making it. That is usually me repeating myself.
Framing as asking permission, genau. I had never put it that way but you are right, and it is a thing I have done for years without noticing. The frame tells the buyer the thing is finished and worth protecting. Two nails tell nobody anything, which is the point.
A heron gone wrong above the kettle. That is a better teacher than the hallway, because you cannot avoid a kettle. What went wrong with it, if you don't mind my asking? The wrong failures are the useful ones and I would like to know which kind it was. Easy is a liar, yes. It is the hard ones that keep talking to you at bad angles.