Oh, Those Bitter Ironies

I am going to be in an art show soon but I didn't have the art finished by publicity time. The curator grumbled, but I felt uncertain about whether the painting would actually be the one I'd submit in the end, so I didn't rush it.

I then sent the painting to get framed and wondered if I should send the curator the image before I received the art all tidy in its new protective shell. Still I held back.

Today I picked up the framed piece. The framer messed with my painting! He removed paint and left a mark where he did so. I should think this is similar to a graphic artist in a newspaper production department crop editing the copy of an editor's article and leaving in an errant punctuation mark.

There is no way to repair the damage, but luckily the damaged area will be invisible to everyone except for me. Since I do miniatures where a magnifying glass is used for viewing, I'm bummed, though, because one of my art premises is that I don't correct my art: I always march forward without erasing anything. This painting now has a clearly erased spot on the clean white paper.

And now I ponder the irony: with a framer making editorial choices, yes, there actually was a distinct chance that the piece of art could have not ended up in the show. "Scalpel! ...oops...."

I'm uncertain right now what to do. This is when I think that if I could control the world I'd frame my own art. (But if I could control the world I wouldn't be concerned about tiny edits to my art, would I.)