Custom, rotating easel.
 

Here is my new easel. I designed and built it myself.
It is funky looking but it does what I need.
My needs were the following:

1- Raise and lower the work quickly.
2- Rotate the work to any angle.
3- Adjust tilt toward and away from me.
4- A solid easel that DOES NOT move when I don't want it to move.

Here's a view from behind...

Interesting...
 

Very interesting, I can't quite make out from your photos how the canvas is clamped in. Do you have more images?

FINISHED!
 

I finished building my easel yesterday. Now it can fit canvases 60" wide by any height. It is counter weighed so the canvas can be raised and lowered easily. The canvas can be rotated to any angle.

Here's a view from the back. It dices, it slices...

The smaller circle with the indentations does not rotate. It is attached to a block of wood which is connected to the weights by a steel cable and runs vertically inside the aluminum channel.

The outer, big round plate is the rotating element. It holds the canvas and it is connected to the smaller circle through their center by a wooden rod. Ball bearing wheels are attached to the two circles and hold that rod in their inner diameter. The indentations allow me to lock the angle. I also screwed a piece of rubber (that black rectangular shape you see in the back view), which adds friction and helps to sustain the angle.

Those were the things I came up with. Everything else I copied from standard easels I saw in stores.

Now that looks very neat! How do you adjust it up and down and rotating? Do you just push it with your hand or is it more complicated?

All I do is push up or down or around. The moving elements are tied to the weights and there is just enough friction in the system so I don't need to keep adding or removing weights according to the size of the canvas. It stays where I leave it.

Like to build me one? :) I am actually looking for a new easel and one like that looks great! Maybe you should go into business.

Painting is my business. It is going to be, that is, as soon as I sell the first one. As for building you one like this...sure, $10k, 6 months.