Framing is something I have started offering more and more to my collectors. It is a hassle and it is expensive, so it is a good thing for me to just handle, and honestly it is the thing that gets the deal done for a lot of people.

My goal is pretty simple. I want more of my art on people's walls.

When somebody sends me a final photo of the piece hanging in their living room, that is the best part of the work. Seeing it in their field. It leaves here and goes into somebody's actual life, where it gets walked past a hundred times a day and changes with their light and the seasons. That is really where it finishes.

Is framing necessary?

Mostly no.

Let me walk through it with you, because it comes up constantly and I think most people have it backwards.

First thing to know is that every single piece I deliver by hand comes stretched. That is included, and it is part of making the finished piece. To me the stretching is the finishing.

With my Open Studio work, the pieces I am ready to move, I am pretty open to not stretching and just shipping the canvas rolled in a tube. It keeps the cost way down. Same with overseas clients, and with some of the bigger pieces, because once you get past about 40 inches a stretched canvas turns into a freight problem instead of a shipping problem. On Saatchi I have shipped work unstretched before and it really helps with the heavy fees they add on.

Any framer in your city can stretch it for you, usually in a week. You can also do it yourself pretty easily with a kit from Utrecht, Blick, or Jerry's Artarama, somewhere in the $150 range. It saves you a good amount on shipping and it is the same painting either way.

What the edge is doing

I have a few types of frame I offer. But I would say framing is only necessary if the piece demands it, and honestly, I am not sure many of mine do.

So here is my process. I paint flat, unstretched, tacked up on the wall, because I work in layers and I scratch back into the surface. A stretched canvas will poke through and compromise the material. It has a resonance with the air behind it and the line will not be as pronounced.

The canvas stays loose the whole time I am working. Which means paint runs right off the side, and the layers stack up over the edge, and all the scratching carries around the corner. When it finally goes on the stretcher bars, all of that ends up on the sides of the piece. An inch and a half of the actual process, wrapping around, out where you can see it. Sometimes I clean it up if it is necessary, but I like to think about it as part of the piece.

I also know that is a lot of information for somebody to live with. You walk past it and catch the side of it and it changes the dynamics of the piece. I want to be in a three dimensional dialogue with people in their spaces, and the raw edge is pretty much how that happens.

And when I look beyond that, I think the bigger thing a frame does is take all of that away and hand you the finished look instead. Which is a real thing people want sometimes. The container holding the mess inside.

When a piece does demand it

Some pieces do, and a frame can really add something. My pill series each had a glossy colored frame, a different material and color on every one, playing off the pop of the work.

The clearest case, typically, is tone on tone. Say you have a warm grey wall and the painting is working in that same family, so you need a break. Without a frame the piece dissolves into the wall and stops reading as a work. A frame separates the two and gives it a boundary. You can also run it the other direction on purpose and let it blend right in, which is more dramatic and more of a style call, but you want to be making that choice rather than discovering it after it is hung.

The other case is a piece that just feels like it needs an edge. Some paintings end without really ending. A frame gives them somewhere to stop.

I have also found it pulls things together. If you have two very different pieces, putting the same frame color around everything creates continuity.

In all of these cases, when you go looking for a frame, what you are really after is something more finished.

And if that is what you want, I will do it. It is your wall and it is your piece.

It is work, and it costs

I want to be straight about this process part, because I think people assume a frame is something you add on at the end and it is really a very vital part of the finished piece if you are going to get it. 

So here is what the half day to extra day actually is. I measure the piece, and it has to be exact, because that half inch gap shows immediately if it is off on one side. Then I go get the wood, which is its own trip, because I do not keep framing supplies on hand. It takes a lot of space to store lengths of wood and the prices keep moving, so every frame gets sourced for the piece it belongs to. Then cut it, mill it, build the box, square it up, finish the wood. Then adhere the canvas to the back and let it set. Then the hanging hardware, which is different on a framed piece because of the weight.

On a larger piece that is a full day. And it is a day I am not painting.

So it can push your delivery back a few days. Ask me early rather than late, because once a piece is crated and scheduled it is a pain to go backwards.

Wood is really expensive these days. That is pretty much the honest reason professional framing runs what it runs, somewhere between $500 and $1,500 depending on the size and scale of the piece.

I offer it at cost plus. Meaning the cost of materials and enough to cover bringing the truck, because a framed piece is heavier and more fragile and it changes how it has to travel.

I also pick the wood with the painting sitting in front of me. Photographs are hard to read for color, so I would rather see them together and then tell you what I think.

How I build them

I have tried a number of different styles over the years and the best one for me, hands down, is a float frame. I build a box essentially around the canvas and adhere it to the back. The canvas sits inside with a gap of about a half inch all the way around, so the frame never laps over the face of the painting. You still see the edge. You still see the depth. It just has a boundary around it now.

It is substantial and it is heavy. A thin frame on a 60 inch canvas looks too weak.

But that means you have to make sure your wall can actually hold it. Plaster is the example where it might not be the right place for it. Older houses in the Northeast, plaster over lath, and that kind of weight just does not want to stay up there. I have an installer who can handle a professional install in those cases, and honestly I would rather send him out than have you find out the hard way.

Here is how that goes in practice

I finished a piece in September called Ready or Not. Greens and yellows, a lot of open grey, pencil line everywhere, white scraped back through it. Nothing in that painting is sealed over or hidden. So I put it in raw maple, pale and unfinished with the grain still showing, because the wood is doing the same thing the painting is doing. If I had put that one in gold it would not have fit.

Then I did gold frames for a commission on the Upper East Side. Soft greys, dusty rose, a lot of lavender, quiet all the way through. Pale wood would have just vanished into it. The gold gave it somewhere to end, and it picked up the warm underpainting sitting under all that grey. It just popped off the piece. It was incredible, and it matched a previous piece the family had purchased from me.

Most of the time the work is already done and there is no need for anything else. And then once in a while you walk into a room and the frame is the only thing that could have worked. Knowing which one you are looking at is most of the job, in the studio and pretty much everywhere else.

Ask me and I will tell you which one you like and the vibe you are going for.

Kurt

 

FAQ

• Is framing necessary? Mostly no, only when the piece demands it.
• Does a canvas come stretched? Every hand-delivered piece does, included.
• How much does professional framing cost? $500 to $1,500 depending on size and scale.
• What is a float frame? A box built around the canvas and adhered to the back, with a half inch gap so it never laps the face.
• Can I stretch a canvas myself? Yes, with a kit around $150.