There are two ways that I treat the sides of a canvas, and neither prevents the framing of any of my paintings. It does, however, make framing completely unneccesary. I personally like the idea of “ready-to-hang.” Owners can enjoy the painting from day one while they get to know it – its then that they’ll know if it should be framed, and how to frame it to fit the space.

The Gallery Wrap

There are options to the finishing process that deny the need for framing paintings, This first is what I call gallery-wrapped, though its a loose term in this case. The photo below exhibits this approach.

It used to be, not so long ago, in our contemporary-art period (whatever that means!), that painters didn’t paint the sides of their canvasses, if only because galleries would “wrap” them, so the artist had no concern for the sides. It was an “if it ain’t broke…” kind of thing. Backroom gallery workers would take black, textile tape and simply wrap the four sides of the painting with this stuff.

This was the beginning of not needing to frame paintings, a period of commercial pop art that triggered our Contemporary era/period , one that now seems to be ending, on the one-hand,with its superhero appropriation and derivation and done usually in very predictable, sophomoric ways, and on the other-hand, we have those Basquiat Kopy-Kat painters who somehow get some success without having an imaginative bone in their bodies. What a boring way to end an era, but certainly this is the end, my only friends. The art world is a very peculiar place, indeed.

Back to the tape-job subject – this particular innovation was certainly more a marketing move than a functional solution. I mean tape? C’mon now, that’s just a quick-fix, and it isn’t, and wasn’t, professional. But, it did give birth to a new way for painters who do it themselves to present their work. I opt to never leave the sides of a painting unpainted.

So, I’ve taken this wrap into my own hands, not an uncommon choice among artists these days, though I have a couple of options that I play with, this first one more traditional. That would be a crisp, perfectly straight line running the edge where the side joins the face of the canvas, looking like the old tape-job, though performing much better than that other old solution.

The other gallery-wrap method I use, seen with the photo above, has its own versatility. If I extend the black onto the face of the canvas, I can striaght-line it, or I can break it up, make it ragged and rough. Either way can be elegant and so clear in setting of the image.

The Image Wrap

The next option is a good choice for the obsessive, attention-to-detail Virgo-type. This option is called the image-wrap. This was a term that was popularized by the digital, print-on-demand, market. Artists can have canvas reproductions of thier original canvas paintings with the image wrapped around the sides, again, to deny the need of a frame. It’ can be a bit clumsy for many images – an artist needs to have a grasp of the way the image will wrap itself because of contraints that come with digital mediums, particularly with the folds at the top and bottom corners.

However, this is my absolute favorite way of wrapping canvas. Not every series has the same demands, but, when I feel it, well, I do it. Some sides like color, some like black.

The color is a beautiful option really, extending the image beyond the face of the canvas. You can see it in this painting below, “Local Boyz – Bay Street USA.”

This is a typical morning scene, set down by Tower 20, at Bay Street, Southside Santa Monica. This spot was down at the bottom of the infamous Bicknell hill, a never used-by-car entrance to our beach parking lot that we used to skate on. For us, that’s all it was, just another place to skate. Bay Street itself, as a surf-spot, was our highly overrated, though occasionally, fairly darned good, local go-to for quick surfs before or after school or work or what-have-you. Other than a 15 minute drive to the points in the west bay, like Topanga and Malibu, it was the most accessible surfspot in town.

I’ve included in this paintings the partly-revealed logos of four of our major local board-builders logos as homage Zephyr, NatPro, Cheer, and Con. I’d painted the five boards (even numbers can be tough in composition), so it seemed to me that a low-key flex was in order. My choice was obvious,and I included my own underground Omega with its late 70’s logo.

In the painting, I’ve also included a stylized Zuni Sunface made popular by my all-time favorite surf-artist/ storyteller Rick Griffin. True homage is due to those who’ve walked before us, those that taught us, those that inspired us!

How does that work?

You might have noticed that I’m pretty critical of those art-popist painters for copying other’s work, yet I do it, too?

The answer is yes, though not usually, only sometimes, directly. I do reference popular topic from time to time, as do many artists, both fine and commercial. A fine artist can freely make reference to recognized symbols and concepts without reliance upon it to carry a painting – a painting needs to be so much more than popular references. There are a few pop-artists that pull it off well, going beyond the pop rhetoric – they not all be parrots.

It’s fun, to enjoy our pasts, to %celebrate our influences – and it’s something much better than regretting that past. My nod to others is always done in complete respect and honor – it’s to those who have had such a complete and utter effect on my life. Just keeping it alive.

That’s how it works, I guess