Local artist channels Alex Colville to re-create frame for original painting in his style
Local artist Robert Lyon started noticing and admiring the work of Alex Colville as a kid leafing through art books. These days he’s paying very close attention to Colville’s style and technique, but not so much when it comes to painting. Instead, Lyon has been interested in how Colville created the frames that surround his paintings. Lyon was commissioned by the Owens Art Gallery to re-create a frame for a Colville painting that has been missing its artist-created frame since sometime in the 1980s.
Emily Falvey says the Owens originally borrowed Alex Colville’s painting Nude and Dummy from the New Brunswick Museum for an exhibition that opens October 29 called Room for One. “When it came from the museum, it was in a frame that was added later,” says Falvey. “People don’t often think about preserving the frame on a work, but when it’s made by the artist, it’s very important.”
When they saw the non-original frame, Falvey and Owens conservator Jane Tisdale wondered if they could replace it with a frame that replicated one Colville would have made himself. Tisdale thought of local artist Robert Lyon for the job. “She knew he was an artist and that he made his own frames,” says Falvey, “and she thought that was a really nice parallel.”… Continue