A more fitting frame for that portrait I could not have imagined. The painting now seems to have melded with the spirit of the frame. Its tone. Its size and level of detail is as if the frame was built for this painting, and while neither the frame or the painting is stellar separately, together they are my newest treasure.
The painting is an interesting study of my youngest son Benny. At least that is what I used to think. Since I put it in the “new” frame I see it differently. Though Benny’s face takes up half the canvas all we really see of him is his nose and half of a reflective pair of sunglasses. His eyes are hidden. The reflection in the single visible lens is of the painter, Rayna Moy, at the time Ben’s girlfriend and dance partner. I now see that the painting is a self-portrait of Rayna. The curved lens is convex, distorted and so the small image of Rayna is bulging out of the painting toward the viewer. The colors are earthy and bold. By itself the portrait always seemed to me to be a bit grotesque, kind of like a comic book illustration. Somehow the framing of it changed my understanding of it.
The frame was originally paired along with a painting of
ducks. Liz used to collect ducks. All sorts of ducks, just as some people
collect turtles or penguins or eagles she had pictures, plaques, statues, salt
and pepper shakers, of ducks all over the house. If one were looking for a gift
for her one need look no further than a little duck dish or decoy on the jumble
of a table in a second-hand store. This one painting of the ducks had kicked
around the house for a long time, never finding a comfortable place to land and
I was about to toss it. 
I asked and Elisabeth couldn’t even remember when or where she came to own it. It was on the way to the trash can this morning and I had what I sometimes refer to as a “brain fart”. To my eyes the frame around the duck canvas was just about size right for Rayna’s picture of Ben. I have wanted to hang that picture for a very long time but I never came upon the right frame.
With a modicum of care, I removed the duck canvas and stretcher and held Ben’s picture up to the backside of the newly liberated frame. It was perfectly sized to within a quarter of an inch. I carefully marked the frame with a code so it could be easily reconstructed later, then I took the frame apart. It was not easy. Though it was simply pinned by a single nail in the edge of each of the four lap-joint corners, the size of the nail was a huge, 16d finish nail. It required at least 75 pounds of pull to extract each nail with a pair of large pliers. It took all my strength to pull each nail out without destroying the joint and the frame. Next, I trimmed the lap joint to the correct size and reassembled it (sans the brutal 16d nail) and glued each joint. Looking at the frame from the front there is no sign of the work. On the rear there is a single, thin shim of wood I glued to reinforce each corner. I put the painting into the back of the frame and secured it with tacks.
When I turned the assembly around, I could not help but smile at the effect that the frame had on the painting. A softening effect. A muting effect. It no longer felt comic but rather it seemed to be a historical document, a family historical record. I instantly recognized that it was not “of Ben” but a self-portrait of Rayna.
The frame and the picture were married. It was a marriage worthy of the Hallmark Channel Movie of the Week. I hung the new creation above a couple of other paintings of Ben also painted by Rayna. She was Ben’s dance partner at the Yorktown Ballet troop. Bouncing elves spinning on the stage and on the checkerboard squares of our kitchen floor. Seemingly inseparable. She also painted a mural that covers a whole wall, floor to ceiling, in our basement. It is of a painting of a mountainside. Two tiny climbers, a man and a woman, or a boy and a girl, cling to the green side of the mountain. It is not difficult to guess who the climbers were. I remember them clinging to each other in front of the TV, the light flickering from the TV and them giggling. Inseparable. I got the same kind of warm feeling looking at the marriage of the painting with the sunglasses to the old duck frame.
