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 Oct. 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.”
For Robert Lyon, the project is a challenge, and a bit of a thrill. Thinking back to his memories of discovering Colville’s work as a child, Lyon says "it’s pretty cool to be the age I’m at now, and here I am building a frame for an Alex Colville original.”
Lyon worked in consultation with Tisdale to make sure the frame is as close as possible to those Colville made at the time he would have framed Nude and Dummy. The process starts with a healthy respect for the importance of the frame, something which Lyon has after decades of framing his own work.
“A frame really is an extension of the work,” says Lyon. “You’re trying to bring out the best in the work with the frame.”
“There was a very specific style that he was doing at that time,” says Lyon.
Between pictures sent by the National Gallery and going into the Owens vault to view some framed Colvilles, Lyon established the desired look and design. “His work is very particular,” says Lyon. “Very clean, very precise. And from what I’ve seen of his frames, he took that same approach, it’s a very clean line. Very nice angles. Not ornate, not gaudy. Just really clean.”
Physically constructing the Colville-style frame would also have it challenges. “How do I build this frame to match up to what he would have been doing in the 60s?” Lyon asked himself. Shortages in materials, especially a lack of available pine, meant some workarounds were in order. And the oil paints that Colville would have used to finish his frames in the 60s had been replaced by water-based paints.
In the end, Lyon says he’s happy with his end product, and felt like he had Colville’s scrutinizing eye observing his work. “I was kind of channeling Alex Colville,” says Lyon. “I felt like he was in the studio and looking over my shoulder and kind of [saying] ‘No, no, no, no, that’s not the way we do it. We do it this way.’”
If all goes as planned Lyons’ frame will be on view along with Nude and Dummy starting at the end of the month, and then will remain part of the work from then on. “It’s kind of nice to know that, hopefully, for the next 30-40 years, my frame is going to be on an Alex Colville original and I will have played some small part in helping to exhibit his work,” says Lyon.
Nude and Dummy is part of an exhibition called Room for One, opening Oct. 29 at the Owens, and curated by Emily Falvey.
“It sort of comes out of how the enduring inequalities of invisible labor were brought to the fore during COVID-19,” says Falvey. “The show explores that issue through these paintings that are in our collections. I’m looking at the relationships between artists and their partners, their friends and families and just domestic life in general.”
Alex Colville’s partner and wife Rhoda Colville modelled for Nude and Dummy. “Part of what I’m trying to say is that her activity as a model is also a form of creativity and that there was a creative relationship there,” says Falvey.
Other artists featured in the exhibition include Mary Pratt, Elizabeth Cann, and Andrea Mortson.
Currently on at the Owens:
Alex Colville: Throwing Light
4 July – 23 Oct.
Light Lounge (Special Project)
5– 25 Oct.
Undone
Works by Adriana Kuiper + Ryan Suter, Erika DeFreitas, Tara K. Wells, Andrea Mortson, Ursula Johnson, Roula Partheniou
8 Oct. – 11 Dec.
Shaheer Zazai: Are We Even
15 Oct. – 11 Dec.