Defying Gravity

I’ve been a working artist/painter my entire adult life. Throughout my career, I’ve painted on large-scale canvases stretched over wood- panel frames, which can be quite heavy. I always felt I was in great shape and assumed I would never retire. Until one morning, when I woke up with extreme pain running from my neck, through my shoulder, and down to my wrist, with severe numbness in my working hand.

I’ve seen several doctors and have been diagnosed with all kinds of bad-sounding things, but the consensus was for me to get physical therapy, let my body heal, and stop doing the repetitive work that exasperates my condition.

Months later and after many hours of physical therapy, most of the pain has subsided. I was ready to try to work again, but knew I had to make some adjustments to the way I’ve been painting all these years. Two of my friends who are occupational therapists offered to come to my studio, evaluate the way I worked, and give suggestions on how I should work going forward. After observing the way I painted, they told me I should never be working with my arm extended above my shoulder.

Instead, I should be working with my arm extended straight out at chest level to eliminate constant repetitive stress on my neck and shoulder. They suggested I paint smaller canvases or build some type of scaffolding to reach the top of my large paintings.

I have always hung my large canvases directly on the wall. An easel wastes valuable floor space. I would physically lift the large canvases up and down on parallel wall hooks to work on different areas of the paintings. I was constantly reaching over my head or bending over to work.

A scaffolding did not seem practical. I wasn’t about to give up creating my large-scale paintings. Instead, I designed and built a counterweight wall-mounted easel that can handle up to nine-foot paintings. I built the easel with hardware I found online, plywood from the lumber yard, and cables and pulleys from a gym/fitness supplier. My counterbalance weight is a four- inch PVC pipe full of concrete. I found some used slotted weights of different sizes which I can easily add to the cable on top of the counterweight, depending on the size of the painting.

The easel greatly exceeded my expectations. I can effortlessly move a very large canvas horizontally and vertically with one finger, regardless of its weight. I’m now back to work painting full time in my studio again, but I let gravity do the heavy lifting.