Frame Wars

I was at goodwill today shopping for a frame. My thoughts at this point in my life is that rather than making canvas to paint on it would be easier to paint on Masonite panels. I still have yet to discover how to actually cut said panels on my father's table saw but it must be easier then making a stretcher and having to buy canvas. Such is my thinking anyway. (And I refuse to buy store prepared canvases not because I actually know enough to realize how low quality they are. No it is just because I am an art snob and someone once told me they are low quality and I took that to mean I should look down on the people who use them.)The only problem is that a Masonite panel hard to hang on a wall. The solution of course is a frame. I am scared of making my own frames as well so I decided that I would just buy frames at thrift stores and then make painting to fit them. I feel like an inventive genius but surely someone has had this idea before me. 


None the less I went to goodwill to browse through their used wares. The selections of frames was not great. There was one small bad painting in a wood frame which drew my immediate attention but i decided that it wasn't the type of frame that I wanted. Next my eyes went to a large lithograph of a landscape in a slightly better wood frame. What struck me most was it's size. it was the largest of the frames they had in the area. The lithograph was held in by finishing nails which looked easy enough to get out. Mainly though it was the size of it. Maybe 40in. by 30in., I had made bigger paintings but  not recently. I was slightly intimidated which I liked. The lithograph itself was fairly interesting too. It might be fun to paint on and add too. I wasn't sure if that would defeat the idea of buying the thing to frame a piece of Masonite but I figure it probably didn't matter. Something about it made me hesitate though. Maybe I just had to work up the courage for taking such relatively large object up to the cashier. Also I wanted to look at pants. I figured "What are the chances of someone else taking it?" 


I walked around empty handed and looked at the pants. I eventually made my way back to the frames, and maybe because I still wasn't convinced that I wanted to buy the big thing. i started going though the other frames on the shelves. As I am doing this a man walks down the isle towards the framed objects I am looking at. He zeros pretty much right in on the large framed lithograph I was considering buying. I thought about whether or not I should tell him I was considering buy it. I figured that I was far enough way to were I was implying with my body language that I wasn't seriously considering buying it. I don't know it just felt rude to tell him, and besides at this point I still think the chances that he would want to buy such a thing are low. But sure enough, he picks up the lithograph and takes  so he can examine it more closely in privacy of the next isle. 


At this point, I am slightly upset. I don't know if it was just because it seemed I could no longer have it, but now I desperately wanted that large frame. I looked over and saw the guy examining the MacGuffin. He seemed more interested in the front where I had mostly just looked at the back. He held it close to his face like Sherlock Holmes trying to figure out if it was the original Mona Lisa by looking for some identifying brush stroke. It was a discolored commercial print so I have no idea what this man could have been looking for. I had lost out on the frame I most desired to an idiot, maybe he wasn't but that seem unlikely. 


Indignantly I grabbed an acceptable small wooden frame and decided to walk around the store for a short while with it. I was waiting just in case, to see if the man would change his mind about my beautiful frame. When I walked back to the area he was now looking at the framed objects to see perhaps if there was another diamond in the rough. He had stashed the Precious large frame in the adjacent aisle in front of a bunch of books. I could have easily taken it. It is possible I might not have been able to get out of the store with it and not have him notice, but I could have defiantly taken it. From there I would just have to hope that he was as confrontational as I am. I could somehow find is address and torment by sending him the lithograph (which I know officially thought was stupid) piece by piece wrapped in todays newspaper so he would never forget he came this close to paradise. I didn't take it. Instead, I bought three smaller identical frames figuring I could do a nice triptych. He was once again examining the perfectly typical surface of the lithograph when I left. I don't think we were that different. He is just a bit more clever. I just kind of hope he ends up discovering he doesn't know shit about lithographs.