21st Century version of a 17th Century Spanish Baroque frame with carved gadrooned corners, full-grown, giving way to stylized newborn gadrooned centres. The gilding is 22K gold leaf over red clay on the corners and black clay on the centre panels. The polychrome reverse rebate is adorned with sgraffito patterns of bean vines in the corners and centres in the full Baroque style.
It was my intention to enhance Paul Van Ginkle’s 70 x 40 inch oil painting Passion of the Tornado with a frame using the strong, heroic and passionate qualities found in Spanish Baroque frames crafted during the past five centuries: Simply put, the energy of the painting needs and deserves a frame of equal strength to contain it. The frame I’ve created makes full use of corner and centre cartouches, as this design forces the eye to begin viewing the painting at the centre of the image and only secondarily allowing the eye to gravitate upward along the figure to the upper corner embellishments and finally down to the lower third of the painting. The raised inner carved moulding is another attempt to match the painting’s energy. The simple or newborn gadrooning of the carved centre panels move outward where they grow into fully realized gadrooned corners, bursting, radiating, and attempting to escape the confines of the outer black panel. The change in the pattern from the sober centre carving to the raucous corner gadrooning mirrors the energy that is contained in the heart of the painting.
Toning was achieved by rubbing almost all of the gold off the black clay. A softer rub was employed on the corner gilding to reveal small amounts of the red clay contained there. A fairly light shellac (for a Spanish frame) was used to tone the gold and then dark washes were applied on top to begin the aging process.
