I received a request, in response to last week’s blog, for a picture of my Wall of Nudes before I dismantled it all. I agreed to comply, but before I could photograph it for posterity, I felt obliged to try for some semblance of order. Not perfect order, as you will see, but a little bit more coherent than the crazy-quilt effect suffered by my bridge players. I filled all the gaps at least, which produces a display of nudity even more overwhelming than the original. You are fortunate not to have to experience this in the flesh. (forgive me, pun intended)
I kept out of photo range all of my paintings by Others. The effect is chaotic enough without introducing totally dissimilar artworks. Plus, I would have felt obliged to identify all of them, which would make for a cumbersome blog entry. However, having decided to devote this blog to the Wall of Nudes, I thought I might as well include other nooks and crannies of that room and an adjoining one, the Yellow Room. We tend to name rooms by their predominant color, rather than by their purpose. Purposes of rooms in my house tend to change over time. The Wall of Nudes is in a room formerly known as the Pink Room, for its carpet. The carpet is gone, but I still refer to it as the Pink Room. Others call it the Striped Room (for the stripes painted on the wall). As far as purpose, the Pink Room currently serves as Gallery, Entertainment Room (TV, etc), Pet Dwelling (one dog and a bunny). I suppose it is, in modern parlance, a Family Room. This family, however, consists of me, the dog and the bunny. (My granddaughter, who loves upstairs, has her own fancier TV and does not join us in the Pink Room for any purpose other than a meet up with the dog. (Her dog.)
The Yellow Room is where I do stuff like stretch canvas, mount canvas onto panels, gesso panels, and frame paintings. Framing oil paintings is a pretty simple affair, and if you stick to certain standard sizes, you can pop a painting in and out of a frame quick as a . . . well, bunny. When I began this journey, I would search for and order a specific frame for a specific painting. Somewhere along the line, the possibility of switching frames dawned upon me. I began to stock up on standard sizes at sales, and fit them to paintings as needed for exhibits. At one particularly prolific point of time, I managed to frame and display 81 paintings at one time, finding something appropriate for each one of them in my supply. Nowadays, my paintings are predominantly 11×14, while I have more 10×12 frames than I can use. Turns out 10×12 is not a standard size, but I didn’t know that when I ordered a supply of 10×12 panels from RayMar back in 2006. So for a while there, I was glomming onto 10×12 frames wherever I could find them. Then, of course, wiser, I stopped painting on 10×12 panels. Ergo, excess 10×12 frames. Which led to a wall of 10×12 frames right where I can lay my hands on them, if I ever need them. Why didn’t someone explain the Facts of Frames to me in the beginning?
I explain all of this ahead of time in part to whet your appetite, but mostly because I have little confidence that you would read it after the slide show.
Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:
at the Hatfield Gallery in Manchester; at the Bartlett Inn in Bartlett; at the Red Jacket Inn in North Conway; at the Pantano Gallery in the Shapiro Library at Southern NH University; at the Derry Public Library; at the law offices at 41 Brook St in Manchester; and at her studio by appointment.
Paintings by Aline 