NAPA Exhibition

Much dispute about this, but - if you paint a picture,and it has a focal point, what do you want the viewer to do?  To concentrate on that focal point, or to wander all over the painting and around the sides? <div>I believe that a painting lies on the surface and that a frame enables the eye to concentrate on it.  So I should paint your picture on that plane, and frame it if you can.  Bear in mind that if you DO paint the sides, it will be that much harder for any purchaser to frame it. </div><div> </div><div>Generally, it's my view that a canvas painted on the sides looks hideously as though you don't think it's worth framing.   Others take a different view: but I believe any good painting deserves a frame: it's the bad ones that  don't.  </div>

Thank you Robert for your reply. I understand what you mean. What if you just hang the canvas on the wall? And don't put them in a frame. I have done a few with three canvasses that hang together, you buy them from The Works, and I have painted the edges with the picture, these aren't suitable for framing. I wonder if they would look better with a plain edge, would it be best to pick a coiour from from the painting, or something different? When choosing a mount for a watercolour I usually choose a a colour from the paining.

For what it's worth, there's an incongruously placed thread about this very topic in Pastels - to which this sentence is a link that will open in a new browser tab. Personally, I have been known to continue the image around the edges (in impasto oils, this takes FOREVER to dry) but have migrated to painting the edges of box (deep edge) canvases with acrylic in Payne's Grey. I've done the same with some narrower gallery wrap canvases - the main reason for this was a competition that I regularly enter that specifically requires works to be unframed (works on paper can be mounted, I believe). I attended the awards ceremony for this competition last year (not that I'd won - the judges scarcely noticed my painting - but my poem got a special mention! I'd forgotten I'd even sent a poem... ), and observed, from the exhibition of works, that some kind of finishing did improve the look of the art on the wall. By quite some margin. Mind you, I do quite like the rough 'n' ready look of those canvases with nails in the edges.

I agree with Robert, nothing can substitute a well matched frame, it can enhance an already brilliant picture, or make a not so brilliant one more presentable, but nothing else comes near *-)

Many years ago, I worked in an antique shop; and my landlord today is a restorer of antique furniture.  Both then and now, people would refer to pieces of old furniture as &quot;honest&quot;, i.e. not mucked about with, not encumbered by unnecessary and out of period details and spurious additions, and of course not artfully constructed of MDF with paper veneers..... <div> <div>And I sort of have the same view of paintings, really: I also like a rough and ready canvas, with pins/nails in the sides - I don't want or like the sort of stuff you can buy from The Range, or appreciate hobbyists' surfaces.  I want a painting to be a statement in itself, without prettification, decorated edges, or anything similar.  It's a bit like pocket watches, another obsession - you can buy glittery little things with quartz batteries or mechanical movements mass-produced in China; or you can buy a solid, heavy watch with a Swiss movement; or high quality vintage watches, engineered to last.  </div><div> </div><div>I don't like things that have been tarted up, basically; I want that which is honest,straightforward, not mucked about with.... I know there are many who don't understand this, or just don't agree with it, and fair enough.  But I would never in a thousand years buy a painting with a tricksy, fashionable, fit-in-with-the-décor appeal, because it's not an art object, it's a novelty, a gimmick, and to me it's just tawdry and cheapens your work.  </div><div> </div><div>There's absolutely nothing wrong with leaving a canvas to speak for itself if you just can't afford to frame it - I've got plenty of those!  But I do hate the advertising of paintings with &quot;no need to frame&quot;, that you so often see: thanks and all the rest of it, but I'll make my own mind up about that.... don't try making a selling point out of it!</div><div> </div><div>Right: I've said my piece on this subject, often and again.... I'm now going to shut up.  Cue mass cheering.  </div><div> </div><div> </div></div>