Presentation is a term by which we mean primarily framing, plus where the painting is hung, and what surrounds it. Presentation provides the opportunity to enhance your paintings. Frames can quietly blend your painting in with other art works and furnishings within a room, or they can work to pop the painting out. My style being an impressionist approach to painting suggests to me the use of 2 to 5 inch plein air frames for the most part for my own paintings. Some of my larger paintings are prepared on gallery wrap canvases and I’ve painted the edges for frameless display, but even these I usually present with wood frames.

This plein air painting is presented in a frame crafted from a Black Walnut tree planted in Massachusetts by my father when I was very young. I had the tree felled and milled 3 years ago, and the wood has been air dried for a year in Massachusetts and then out here for 2 more years here in California. A local crafts-person has built several frames for me, as well as other items such as a large dining room table with living edges. And all from the wood of my family’s “Heritage Tree.”