Black walnut
Today's featured framing is a very special project indeed — a print made by our own Riley Wilson! We're going to try not to embarrass him too much… but we are very proud of him, not only as a designer, but also as an artist in his own right. The framing design is a black walnut frame from our in-house hardwood line featuring a custom black walnut strainer and verso window.
Powder-coated aluminum
Powder-coated aluminum in graphite is sleek, elegant, and understated — a beautiful pairing with this Darren Waterston study.
18k lemon gold on black clay — matte finish
At nearly 7 feet tall and painted with the artist's signature flare for drama, this hyperrealistic Marc Dennis painting is larger and more vivid and lush than life — like something out of Carroll's Wonderland or Baum's Land of Oz. After stretching the canvas, we floated it in a contemporary flat top frame gilded with 18k lemon gold over black clay with a matte finish and walnut-stained sides. The thin face of gold is just enough to contain the work while still leaving a sense the painting could burst at any moment to fill the room with wild colors and blooms, enormous climbing vines, buzzing hummingbirds, and insects the size of your fist.
Like the land behind Alice's looking-glass, "Familial Flowers" is full of "wonder, mystery, and danger. You'd have to be mad as a hatter to survive it…"
12k white gold on yellow clay — umber wash
We first shared this pair of paintings earlier this year: Untitled and Phoenix Burst, two 1973 acrylics on paper by Adolph Gottlieb. Both belong to his Burst series — a body of work he began in the 1950s and developed through the last decades of his life. With Burst, Gottlieb shifted away from the dense, gestural abstraction of his peers towards more pared-down forms and concentrated energy.
These matching frames — contemporary flat top profiles gilded in 12k white gold over yellow clay, lightly rubbed and finished with an umber wash — echo the dualities in Gottlieb's work: restraint and power, calm and force — a quiet surface that still radiates heat.
