The framer asked why I couldn't "just commit to canvas"
Took a piece in to get framed this week. Older guy, been doing it forty years, probably knows his stuff. He looks at the work for a long minute and goes "this is interesting, but why not just commit to canvas? you'd probably sell more."
And I stood there going... what does that even mean. Commit. Like torn paper and acrylic washes and a few layers of charcoal is me chickening out. Like there's a correct material and everything else is me being indecisive.
Didn't say much. Paid for the frame. It's a nice frame, he did good work.
But I've been chewing on it for three days. There's this whole school of thought that if a thing isn't easily categorizable it's not finished. That mixed media is a phase before you find your real medium. Nobody says that to someone who only paints. They say "strong palette" or whatever. But the minute you're not pure, you're just... hedging.
Ma'am I'm 45. I'm not hedging. I've been at this long enough to know exactly what I'm doing and it is not a compromise.
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I get why that's stuck in your head. "Commit" is such a weird word to throw at someone's process, like mixed media is a phase you're going through instead of a choice.
I work in pastel and people say stuff like that to me all the time, in a nicer way maybe but underneath it's the same thing. "Have you tried oil?" "You know pastel doesn't really last the way..." As if the medium is the point. The work is the point.
Forty years in one trade probably does something to how you see materials. Everything looks like a step toward the thing you'd have done. But torn paper and washes and charcoal is not indecision. It's a language. You made every one of those choices on purpose, even the ones you made by instinct.
Also, "you'd probably sell more" is doing a lot of heavy lifting. Frames are his business, not yours. He sees art through the register. That's not a judgment on your work, it's just the lens he's got.
The piece meant something to you or you wouldn't have paid to frame it. That's the thing worth holding onto. Not his idea of commitment.
"As if the medium is the point. The work is the point." That's the whole thing, isn't it. I work in cyanotype and people ask me why I don't just use a camera. As if the chemistry and the sunlight aren't decisions, they're just me not having figured out the real way yet.
There's a kind of person who thinks every material is a compromise you make until you get to the proper one. But some of us choose the paper, choose the salt water, choose the thing that can tear. That's not commitment missing, it's the commitment itself.
"choose the thing that can tear" yeah. that got me. that's the whole reason I do paper, it doesn't pretend to be permanent. some of us want the material to show its own history, not hide it under gloss.
and yeah, the camera thing, I can imagine. as if cyanotype isn't literally a camera, just a slower one with a soul. people want everything to look like they already know what it is. that's a them problem.
"Have you tried oil", god, the way that one never stops. As if you just haven't discovered it yet. Like pastel is a waiting room.
I think that's exactly it though. Forty years of anything and you start thinking in one direction. He's not a bad guy, he framed it fine, but there's this assumption that everyone's on a ladder toward the same top rung. And the weird part is I'd probably be annoyed if he'd said nothing at all about the work. But "commit" just got under my skin. It's a trust thing masquerading as a compliment.