Art – do you frame or stretch?

Happy New Year! I hope 2017 is being kind to you so far.  It has been wonderful to me. We escaped for a week right after Christmas to Cuba for a little R&R.  It was wonderful to put my feet in the sand instead of heavy winter boots, even if it was just for a short while.

While we were there, we ventured to the Varadero Market to check out some artists. I love to buy pieces of art while we are away to capture the feel and beauty of a country.  And Cuba doesn’t disappoint with their many talented and creative artists.

We bought a typical Cuban scene of a colourful street with a 1950’s vintage automobile, of course.  The colours are so vibrant, we were smitten at first sight!

I’m thinking it will be absolutely stunning in my new navy dining room. Here’s a picture my son in law took on Christmas day of my holiday table, below.

So now how to finish it? Do I stretch and frame or just simply stretch it? Well, I put the question to my followers on FB and the response was overwhelmingly to have it stretched.

But I guess, I don’t follow advice too well, as I’m having it framed.  

My reasons are because the dining room is more formal so a frame feels right but actually, the artwork made my decision fairly easy. As you will see in the photo below.

Do you see how the terra cotta colour is kind of creeping out of the edges of the paint on the sides and bottom? It would look really unfinished if you could see that on the sides of it once it was on the wall. You could paint the sides I suppose as I have other mounted pieces done that way, but I didn’t want to play with the integrity of the painting.  The other option was to still stretch it but to bring the painting over the sides so that there was no unfinished sides but then I’d lose the artist’s signature and shrink the size of the art.  Not what I wanted to do.

And there was another plus to having it framed, Michael’s was having a framing sale and if you choose a sale priced frame the cost of the stretching was also on sale. So even though stretching was cheaper, for only slightly more money, it will be stretched and framed.

So there you have it, it will be stretched and framed. I decided on no matting as I wanted to keep it relatively simple and clean.  I went with the frame in the picture above. It’s a soft black and has a slight texture which gives it a little bit of a rustic feel to it, kind of like the painting itself.  Even though, it’s going in my dining room, I didn’t want it to be too formal and I certainly didn’t want a busy frame as the painting has alot going on. I wanted the piece to shine out of the frame, if that makes any sense.

So sorry, to those of you who voted for stretching only.  I’ll post a picture once it’s done and in place and you can see what you think.