Janet Fons Fine Art: Winter 2018 Newsletter

My March 2018 newsletter. In case you missed it. (This is a copy, none of the links are active.)

Winter newsletter

It's been a busy winter and I did a lot of painting. Here are three of a recently completed series of landscapes called Far Hills 1, 2, & 3, all oil on canvas. Painted with a palette knife, the location they depict is slightly more fantasy than reality.

I also had an incredible sale through my gallery, Grafica Contemporary Fine Art in Webster Groves. Their client, an architecture firm, redesigned an entire floor at the St. Louis Club in Clayton. The client bought eight of my current available paintings and commissioned a ninth piece to be painted to a custom size (30x48 inches). Wow is all I can say. One sale is exciting enough...this one is thrilling. They are all located in one of the banquet rooms, the Louisiana Room, shown below.

How to Warm Up a Commission

The square painting (below) was the inspiration for the St. Louis Club commission I recently completed. The client loved the original 30x30 painting, and in fact bought it, but wished to have a bigger piece to make statement in the space.

The commission shown above: Cloudscape #9, (30x48, oil on canvas) was painted with a slightly warmer tone overall, one that made the clouds look at little less ominous.

If you look at the two paintings, the difference in tone may be subtle but its definitely there. I used a wide range of grays for both paintings. My favorite mix for gray is Burnt Sienna and French Ultramarine. More blue than brown in the mix will yield a cooler gray and more brown than blue will give me a warmer gray. The additional difference in the commission was adding Naples Yellow which really warmed up the final painting.

Tips on How to Properly Hang Artwork

Height Matters
One of the frequent mistakes people make is hanging artwork too high. Here are some tips on how to get it right.

On a blank wall with no furnishings against it, the middle of the art should be 66 to 72 inches from the floor. Got really high ceilings? Adjust to the high end of the range: position the middle of the art at 72 inches from the floor. Low ceilings? Go for the lower end of the range at 66 inches - the lower you hang art, the higher your ceilings will appear.

When hanging art above a piece of furniture (headboard, sofa or credenza), the bottom of the art should be eight to 12 inches higher than the top of the furniture. Too large of a gap makes the art look like it's floating away and disconnected from the furnishings below.

Over a fireplace, hang the artwork four to six inches from the top of the mantle. Remember, don't get tricked into thinking you have to hang your artwork half way up the wall no matter the ceiling height - hang it in relation to the furniture below it.

Making Arrangements
The size of artworks and of groupings is just as important as the height at which the pieces are installed. Hanging a tiny piece of art above a large sofa will make the artwork look insignificant and puny. Try to fill about two-thirds of the width of the furniture. For instance, if you have a seven-foot-long sofa, the artwork above it should consume about a four-foot length of wall space above it. A queen-size bed is five-feet wide, so hang artwork above it that's three-feet wide.

Long empty walls, as in a hallway, are perfect for creating gallery-style art walls filled with coordinated work - they could be united by subject, medium, frame or size. Always follow the 66-inch rule (from the middle of the artwork to the floor) rather than lining up all the bottom edges of the frames. When installing a collage or large group of works on one wall, hang the largest piece in the middle, and work your way out-word with pieces gradually decreasing in size with the smallest on the ends of the arrangement.

Excerpts from an article by Karl Lohnes of the Montreal Gazette.