painting

Here’s a question for the board of Collection Ethicists, should one exist somewhere and have nothing better to do :

Are you allowed to collect yourself? Or is that just kinda the default? And can ‘collecting’ also be intrinsically tied to the act of production?

Let me clarify. A few months ago, I stumbled into a lost collection of oval portrait canvases I’d bought and forgotten about. I might have had some grand project in mind, or I might have just wanted to load up my Dick Blick order by twenty bucks so I could score free shipping. The real reasons for these canvases have been lost to time – but recently, the canvases started to evolve.

On my art blog, someone commented that I hadn’t painted a Bizarro in a while. I’ve blogged here about Bizarro, and how he’s definitely one of my favorite comic characters for all of the wrong reasons, and how I wouldn’t repent over my twisted Bizarro-lust. There was a period of time when a day wouldn’t go by without a Bizarro drawing, so with this reminder from a fan, I painted a Bizarro – both to reconnect with myself and maybe make a sale. I didn’t make a sale.

Coincidence coalesced into a chance meeting with The Autumn Society, who was seeking art for their ‘The Jokers Wild’ show this past April. I had oval canvases, they wanted a painting of The Joker (another favorite bad guy, and one I tend to draw a lot) – and I couldn’t resist.

This is where we reach those crucial moments of critical mass, immediately before something turns into a collection. Not only were these two paintings unified by being of identical size, but they also followed along in the theme of villainy. This was bad news for my sanity and my free time.

Only months before, I gave up every weeknight to paint tiny 3” x 3” canvas portraits of fifty different DC Comics superheroes – just because I’d done a few and they were gaining momentum. I’d been fishing around for ideas to do a similar project for an array of favorite bad guys, but nothing seemed to fit into place. Creatively, tiny and cartoonish superheroes was an interesting mix of form and function and anti-tradition, so I had to come up with something thematic to with run parallel to, or completely conflict with, that theme of villainy.

With two portraits done, I was again called upon to contribute art to The Autumn Society’s ’80s Pop’ show in June. The art could be anything I felt like, as long as it dealt with those things of the 1980s. I eschewed Pee Wee’s Playhouse, Parker Lewis Can’t Lose and The Real Ghostbusters and painted a diptych of He-Man’s Skeletor and Thundercats’ Mumm-Ra. With this, I crossed the line from ‘just makin’ stuff’ to ‘collection’. But is it possible to collect… myself?

I control the means of production, I control the scarcity, I control every aspect of the product. Since I’ve made a few of these things, I started envisioning a whole gallery of bad guys lining my front entranceway in my new house, or perhaps lining the stairway, as if entering some strange Hall of Injustice (or maybe just the Kitchen Nook of Unfairness) – so I also have no intention on parting with any of these paintings. They are collected.

It’s never easy to sell your own art. I recently started my own webstore, and it’s still not any easier – but to collect yourself is to kinda curse yourself to obscurity and poverty. When it comes down to it, you never collect your own creations because you think they’ll increase in value – and if you feel a hankerin’ for a new piece to add to your collection, you can just sit down and start working on another one. For the active, dedicated collector, it might prove difficult to pull on the reins when so much power is immediately available.

I’ve already polled friends regarding their favorite fictional bad guys, and I’ve sketched everyone from The Lion King’s Scar to Hal 9000. A Darth Vader is half-painted on the drawing table, and a Sauron is getting perfected, while my own version of Star Trek’s John DeLancie as Q needs some work. While, as I mentioned, I control the means of production, sometimes having those means out of my own hands spells a little more sanity. A credit card limit is more likely to stop me than a frantic need to create everything I can think of.

So, I guess I’m collecting myself in the name of home decor, and ultimately, when I get tired of look at Oogie Boogie’s glowing face or the Ice Truck Killer’s smug grin, I can sell ‘em off in one big chunk to any willing buyer. It’s a little easier to wait for DC Direct’s next Batman statue than it is to fight the urge to stay awake all night, building upon a potentially collection of bad guys.

And yes, that is an open invitation to name any and all of your favorite bad guys in the comments below.

A Collector’s Quest reader contacted me recently, with a question about art. Her father had acquired an original Burnette Pletan, which had passed into her posession. She fondly remembered the painting on the wall, and hoped to display it again. However, she would like to display it un-framed, because the Masonite backing is part of the charm.

Remember Pletan? I wrote about him last year, in an article on outsider art. Burnette billed himself as the Fastest Artist In The World, producing large paintings in mere minutes and selling them before they were barely dry. His style, slapped on to sheets of Masonite with the kind of painter’s brushes you find at Menard’s, has enormous personality and charm, even if its not exactly high art. The uniqueness of his medium — store-grade acrylic paints, Krylon da-glo spraypaint, house-painting brushes, Masonite — also make his paintings quite recognizeable.

So, the question: how to display a Pletan painting, without covering the edge? Obviously, framing will obscure it, so that should be avoided. I spoke with my archival-framing expert, Joan Loughridge of Dry Creek Gold Leaf, Inc., and she had an idea. First, though, Joan points out that framing is the best way to protect the painting from damage, and should always be the first choice. If framing is out of the question, though, Joan suggested placing the painting on an easel for display.

The traditional ‘easel’, imagining beret-wearing painters strolling down Parisian streets with a three-legged easel under their arm, is probably not the best suggestion for displaying a completed work of art. Easels specifically made for showing works of art are called ‘display easels’, and come in a wider variety of styles and structure to accommodate all sizes of art and provide a sturdier support for the work. I would recommend going with a ‘H’ style of easel, one built with right-angles, rather than a tripod one, to support the art.

If you can’t afford the floorspace for a large display easel, there are a couple ways I’ve found to display art like this. The first, and probably simplest way, is to install a plate rail on the wall, and set the art on it. A “plate rail,” as it sounds, is usually used to display your Franklin Mint plates for all to see. It’s a very narrow shelf with a ‘groove’ running along the leading edge of the shelf surfave. Plates, or other flat displayables, rest their bottom edge in the groove, so they don’t slide off, and lean against the wall for support. If the Pletan artwork is short enough, attaching a plate rail longer than the width of the painting should give support without covering up the edges. “Short enough” is the key: the taller the painting, the steeper the angle of the painting against the wall. If the angle is too steep (the painting is too upright), a breeze, or even just shifting in the house, could cause the painting to fall off. The deeper the plate rail, the safer it will be.

The last suggestion I have is to use an art hanging system. Museums and private homes alike use them as easily-changeable, stylish ways of displaying art on a wall. They consist of attaching a modern picture-rail high up on the wall, with supports hanging down. Adjustable hooks on the supports allow art to be positioned and repositioned anywhere along the supports or the rail. Make sure to get a display system like the one pictured on the right, with small shelves or hooks that support the work; many of the display systems are designed to hang frames in a traditional way, via a wire on the back of the frame, which will not work in this case. This system also supports the top edge of the work, reducing the risk of falling that you would have with the plate-rail. Since most Pletan paintings are wider than the frames in the picture, you can line up two (or more) rods, even up the support clips, and the painting will be safely supported against sliding out or falling.

Because Pletan’s works are painted right to the edge, any display method that places pressure directly on the edge of the work might result in paint chipping. This does include framing, so in any case velveteen ribbon or a felt pad should be used to reduce the amount of wear on the painted edge of the work.

Did you hear about the painting that was dropped off at a Goodwill store in Portland and wound up fetching $165,002 on the organization’s auction website? It turns out it was an original work by watercolorist Frank Weston Benson. The Goodwill organization provides job training and other services designed to put people to work, so the money will surely go to a good cause. There’s some question, however, whether the anonymous donor who left the painting in the store’s collection bin knew what he or she was giving away. The same thing happened a few years ago in one of the Chicago burbs.

So Grandma’s scaling down to a smaller place and asks you to help get rid of some of her stuff. You wonder if that oil painting that hung in her upstairs hall for 50 years is worth anything, but how do you find out?

A good place to start is the internet. Try to find out more about the artist who created the painting, if the artist’s signature is legible. Simply typing “Frank Benson artist” into his or her favorite search engine would have told the painting’s owner that it was a good idea to find out more about the painting.

The obvious choice is to contact a professional appraiser, however the appraiser will likely charge a fee even if the piece if worthless. If you’re willing to hold onto this painting for a while, you could call around to local art museums and galleries to find out if any host an appraisal day where people can bring their art in to have a professional take a look at it for free or for a small fee. Another alternative is to take the painting to an auction house that frequently deals with fine art and ask their opinion of the piece and how much they believe it would bring at auction.

And if you discover the painting isn’t going to net any cash for Grandma, go ahead and take it to the Goodwill where someone might pull it from a bin, dust it off and enjoy it for another fifty years.

More info:

Here’s a site that will provide free online appraisals when provided with a photo and description of the piece, but only responds to “interesting” works of art

Around seven years ago, my family gave me the gift of art. Unlike most twenty-somethings, I wanted real art on my walls – something actually produced by the hands of a human, not a print. At the time I owned a variety of works, some genuinely old and valuable, but others of the ’starving artist travelling sale’ genre. The art from my parents was mostly of the latter, but one was a bit different. Unframed, sloppily painted on a piece of Masonite, was a winter scene. The story goes that my great-uncle bought it directly from the artist some years before while travelling, and gifted it to my parents some time later. I’d never seen the painting before, which showed my parent’s take on the painting, but I accepted it and planned on getting it framed. Because it was an odd size, large but poorly proportioned, I risked spending lots at a professional framer, so it was put in storage.

Some years later I was browsing a junk store in Wisconsin, when I found something strikingly familiar: two sloppy unframed paintings on Masonite, quite obviously by the same artist. I wasn’t 100-percent sure, but the price was right, so I took them home with me.

According to the family rule, three of anything constitutes a collection. Not wanting to seem an ignorant collector, I decided to find out something about the painter. Two of the paintings were signed “Pletan,” and thanks to Google I found out where my art came from.

ExpressoTILT! has what appears to be the only article on the internet pertaining to the artist, but thankfully it’s quite complete. Burnette G Pletan was, according to the article, the “Fastest Painter In The World,” producing thousands and thousands of works of art in his lifetime. Here, I managed to own three of them, and given the scale of his portfolio, it’s quite surprising not to find more about him online. Burnette took up painting as a career simply because he knew he could do it. Without official training or artistic background, his works could be called folk or outsider art.

“Outsider Art” is a term generically used to describe untrained artists creating works based on their own creativity, and in earlier times was attributed to art created by the mentally ill. Today, it’s mostly used as a hipster term to describe anything on the fringes of the artistic community by untrained artists, but it still bears the stigma, based on the term ‘outsider’, of being excluded from the genuine art community. It also often crosses the lines of ‘folk art,’ a style generally culturally-driven and created by untrained small-scale artisans. Pletan, for example, could fall into either category: his art depicts rural scenes, much like a lot of folk art, but his expressive, ultra-fast style of painting and unique media puts his work more towards ‘outsider art’.

The biggest advantage to an art collector is the price: outsider art is generally cheap to come by. Challenging Pletan’s claims of high art volume, Steve Keene considers himself America’s most prolific artist, producing hundreds of paintings in a sitting. On his website, for $12, anyone can purchase one of his works (provided they don’t care what the painting’s subject matter is). While Keene is moving towards the center of the art world, leaving the fringes via exhibitions and media exposure, many “street artists” in large cities sell their art for enough to get by. eBay’s outsider art category is full of artistic hopefuls, many of which appear to be painted deliberately outsidery by trained artists, but as with any eBay shopping excursion careful examination will yield a modern treasure.

Because ‘outsider art’ is primarily a description of the artist rather than the style of art, the variety to choose from is quite large. Due to the lack of refined training much does appear ’sloppy’, but much of modern art today, such as Pollack, emphasises the emotion of the work over realism. The lack of training also reduces the use of artistic metaphors, which makes outsider art much more appealing to the general public.

As a collectible, the volume and price of outsider art available allows most anybody to start and maintain a sizeable and varied collection. As with any collections, the cardinal rule applies: collect what you enjoy. Because of its uniqueness, outsider art begs to be displayed, so be sure you’re willing to look at the work on a daily basis. Since outsider art is rarely found in mainstream outlets, much of the fun is in finding it by frequenting ‘art in the park’ sales, flea markets, or street vendors. As with mainstream art, there’s no guarante that any particular artist will become more valuable than the others, but for the price there’s minimal risk in overspending. A Pletan painting recently sold on eBay for just under $100, and an independent seller is asking for over $2,000 for a particularly nice Pletan painting. While Steve Keene’s paintings aren’t particularly rare, the attention his work is geting will no doubt increase the value of his works as time goes on. Consider also Grandma Moses, who, in her seventies, took up painting because arthritis interfered with her needlework, and over time her works because quite valuable, earning her awards and accolades. Beyond these examples are a wide variety of artists,drawing on nothing more than their own imagination to create beautiful and interesting works of art – far more accessible than the works exhibited in galleries, but in my opinion, definitely better than the prints and posters hanging in most homes. Jump into the unknown, and find some outsider art; at the very least, knowing where the painting came from is worth the price.