My window painting #47 finally earned its frame
Okay so I've painted the same window in my apartment, I don't know, forty-something times now? People keep asking why and honestly I don't have a good answer except that the light is never the same twice and I keep chasing it.
But here's the thing. I framed one today. Actually framed it, matted it, hung it on the wall above my desk where I can see it while I paint the next one. I've never done that before. Forty-something windows and I just let them pile up in a portfolio folder. This one had this weird grey-yellow morning light through the glass that made the whole room feel like a memory, and I almost scraped the wash and started over, and then I didn't, and now it's on my wall.
It's not a sale. It's not a commission. Nobody's going to buy it. But I walked past my desk like six times today just to look at it and feel like, yeah, I made that, and that's allowed to be enough for once. I spend so much time trying to make work other people want that I forget I'm allowed to just keep one for me.
Anyway that's my win today. Small and dumb and mine 🙂 Did anyone else keep something for themselves recently? Because I think we should all be doing that more.
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Framing it is a different act, isn't it. The work becomes a thing instead of a pursuit. I make collages, small ones, and I have a pile of them in a drawer I keep meaning to do something with. I've framed maybe three in the last five years.
There's something honest about choosing one. Not because it's the best, but because it's the one you want to live with while you keep going. Everyone asks why you paint the same window, but maybe the real question is why you'd frame one at all.
The grey-yellow light sounds right. That in-between hour when none of the colours commit.
That's it exactly. The framed one stops being a search and becomes a statement. I've been setting mosaic for years and I still have a stack of finished work under the workbench nobody's ever seen, because once it's framed and hung you're saying "this is the one," and that's a commitment.
But you framed three. That's three times you were willing to say it out loud. More than most people ever do.
And yeah, that grey-yellow hour before the light decides anything, it's the honest one. The pretty ones are easy to frame. The in-between ones have more to say.
Yeah, that's exactly it. It stops being part of the search and becomes a thing you have to live next to. Which is honestly a little terrifying, now that it's on the wall. Like, great, now there's proof of a decision I made, what if the next one is better?? But I think that's the point you're making, it's not about best, it's about the one that feels right to keep company with while you keep going.
Three frames in five years though, that's not nothing. The drawer pile sounds like mine, except mine is a portfolio folder that's basically a graveyard at this point lol. What's stopping you from framing a fourth? Genuinely curious, because I think I avoided it for so long because framing felt like committing to a version of myself as an artist and I wasn't ready for that.
And yes, the grey-yellow hour. It's like the light itself is undecided and everything in the room picks up on it. I keep chasing that one, I don't think I've caught it yet.