Side Bar: Clare's Wall-Sized Canvas Works!

This afternoon, Downstairs Clare and I completed installation and implementation of his ingenious wall-sized canvas support system. The pine frame with its array of dowel pegs were fastened to the concrete wall securely on a recent day. And on another, small spring clips were clover-hitched onto the pegs, allowing a versatile method of stretching painting substrates into the giant frame. All the way along, at several key steps, Clare and both had doubts about it working, but today as we tested it by stringing up a length of primed canvas, I actually saw glee burst outta Clare (which is about as rare a sighting as anything really super rare that you never ever see.) He said, smiling, "It works!"

I asked him how he came to dream this idea up and he said that while he was watching the movie Girl with a Pearl Earring, he saw in one shot an easel in the background that had the canvas stitched onto an open frame on the easel. Brilliant of him to adapt that quick observation to this scale I think.

Tomorrow, after the canvas has stretched itself out further, we can tighten up the tension strings and Clare can start throwing gesso (He knows what that means) ok, translation disclosure, because you are all artists and will understand; It's a phrase Clare advised to a painter that was having trouble loosening up, being too fussy and "shut down". The phrase stands for not overthinking and not be blocked by technique or method, instead painting for the Joy and as Clare said to the student; "Just throw the damn gesso!"