Where it belongs

It has taken a while, too long some might say, but The Optimist’s Suit finally hangs on the wall.

I actually got the picture framed some time ago, as quickly as I could afford to. I was driven to do this in part because I was terrified that the print might get damaged, but also out of the simple recognition that it deserved to be framed.

There are some people I know who run a small art gallery, people that I have entrusted to frame other pictures of mine. So I took The Optimist’s Suit to them.

You can see here, I hope, just what a wonderful job they did. The frame is square – echoing the shape of the print – but the print is not mounted squarely in it. A little more space at the bottom of the mount than at the top. A visual trick that apparently makes the print look more centred that if it actually *were* centred.

We chose (I say we, because I trust them to carefully persuade me to choose what is right rather than what I might like) – we chose a frame that is not plain wood, but rather “distressed” with paint washes. Cream, I guess, with the edges picked out in a graphite colour. Somehow I rather think this suits the found images feeling that I get from Maggie Taylor’s work. And if you look at the background in the print, you can see that it, too, is “distressed”. So I think this works, and I hope that you do, too.

The shape of the frame, the contours of it, this echoes (or perhaps, reinforces) the mount in which the print was set. And I was persuaded to opt for UV-resistant glass, all the better to protect the print.

All in all, I am really pleased with the result. That it wasn’t cheap to do is entirely appropriate, given the immense value that this picture holds for me.

It took a while to get it hung. Some of you will know, some of you won’t, but my life turned upside down and I am living something of a temporary existence right now. In between everything. And for a while, that in-betweeness was almost overpowering, so the print sat, safely wrapped, and waited for me. But now, I am starting to get a sense of moving on to whatever comes next, so…

So, finally the print hangs. It hangs next to the place where I use my computer – my connection with you, my astounding friends. And next to the place where I try, slowly, to remember how to write.

I’m still in that place, that in-betweenness, but now the picture hangs beside me. I have two windows in my room: through one, the sunlight falls, and cheers my day. Through the other, I see a winged man, and he reminds me of what I was, and of what I am yet to be.

Thank you. With all my heart, thank you.