Why You Should Choose Picture Frames Based on Your Art, Not Your Decor

WOMAN Putting up art pieces

The framing of artwork is a work of art in and of itself. A great piece of art without a decent frame is like a car without wheels – still nice to look at, but just not all there. Finding a way to effectively communicate your artwork’s message using a frame is a job that requires no small amount of skill, and many years experience.

Many people try to match the frames they’re using for their art with the other decor in their homes, not realising that this defeats the purpose of framing altogether. We’re going to explore the reasons to choose your picture frames based on the art they surround instead of the surroundings themselves, and we hope that you enjoy learning these important and compelling points.

Art Synergy

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An artwork represents itself as well as it can, but the immediate surroundings of the art cannot be included in the image itself. This would mean more frames are needed, and more, and so on and so forth. Getting a frame to complete the image itself is the trick, and the synergy between the two is what makes a pairing like that great. Oceanic imagery benefits from dark framing, to represent the depths of the endless, black sea, and this idea of matching frame to image works every time.

Room Feeling

The overall feeling of a room is something that should be considered when framing, but not in a decor sense.Imagine you have a sunroom with space for an art piece, and your piece is a beautiful, warm coloured portrait. You wouldn’t look at this combination of warm light and warm space and think “jet black synthetic frame”, would you? No, you’d go with a warm Blackwood or mahogany A3 frame, bringing out the deeper tones in the artwork itself while giving the room a focal point to express from. In this way, studying the room feeling saves you from throwing off both the artist’s vision in the work, and the overall feel of the room as well.

Aesthetic

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Taking the visual design of an artwork and ignoring it for the sake of matching frames and furniture is a sin against the artist themselves, and should never be perpetuated. Looking at a painting or a photograph in a whole sense, we see the colours, we see the shapes, and we see the feeling given off by this particular work.

This is the aesthetic value of the piece, and we ignore the meaning or story of the piece when we examine it in this sense. Matching the frame aesthetically to the piece is still leaps and bounds closer to being acceptable that matching the aesthetics of your decor with the frame, and ignoring the artwork altogether.

Message Loss

Finally, the most important part of the reasoning for choosing your frame based on the art instead of the decor – the meaning behind the work. The art has a story, a message to tell to the viewer. Whether that’s hard to ascertain or immediately clear, it’s there for you pick up on, and a frame that doesn’t reflect that will, by its very nature, detract from that. Choosing the frame for the art itself is the only way to ensure the message of the work isn’t lost in a blind grab for aesthetic unity in a room.

With these reasons clearly outlined, you now fully understand the importance of matching your art and your frame instead of matching your frame to your room’s decor.

Article Submitted By Community Writer

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