Back From Door. . . .and a tour of Master Framers

I'm back from Door County and very behind of my blogging. The trip was amazing, full of painting and meeting new and old friends. My intent was to make a post at least every other day of the progress but my laptop went dead and that was that. I will be posting later on today all my paintings and photos of the paintout but for now, I'm going to share my day yesterday.
I was fortunate enough to go with a dear friend and collector to Master Framers in St Paul to get a tour of their frame shop and watch part of the process of designing, cutting, carving, molding, guilding, leafing, and finishing off a frame. Frames are so readily available to us (and cheap) painters these days that I think we often times forget what a beautiful art this very old process of creating a frame truly is, a true art in itself and the ones creating them are Masters of their craft!

I don't know about you but I am never quite satisfied with my finish when I get my frames and usually end up toning them or not even using them. So, yesterday was a dream day of thinking of all the possibilities with frames for my paintings. The problem is the cost, can an artist afford to put a gold guilded frame on each piece, probably not. The hope is that the collector will realize that most artists do not charge extra for the frame, that it's a way to display the painting and the collector has the option to keep the frame the artist chose or take it somewhere like Master Framers to customize a piece for their piece of art.

just thinking out loud here. . . . . curious what other artists think about this. . ..