After spending months or days (or minutes — for all of you speed painters out there), it’s finally time to decide how to present your work! And the big question is: Should you invest in buying a nice frame to put around your work and make it “more presentable” or should you just leave it as it is?

One of the best guidelines to follow in my opinion is to determine the subject matter of the painting you made and there really are only two prominent categories, that one can divide paintings into:

The first is modernist art, that is art made in the style of the modernist era (abstraction, minimalism, constructivism and other, more or less non-figurative art). If your work falls into this category, a frame usually only diminishes the power of its narrative.

The era of modern art was an era of the infinitely expanding work of art, that got rid of its constraining frame in order to flow freely and connect with its surroundings (predominantly inside a white cube style exhibition space or at least hanging on a big white wall with lots of empty space around it, so that it could breathe).

On the other hand, there is another trend happening today, where artists choose to use floating frames for such work — many of such examples can be seen in works made with epoxy resin (mostly abstract).

So, if your work is abstract or predominantly non-figurative, your best bet is to leave it without a frame or go with a nice monochrome floating frame that only covers up the edges and makes the work look a bit more clean — it can also help balance a really chaotic or dynamic work, because the hard edges and monochrome colour of such a frame do take the edge off of such works considerably.

The second type of art therefore is everything else; still life, portraiture, landscapes and all the other motifs we artists can muster up. Here, the framing choices are endless and it’s much harder to find the right one to compliment our work.

A good idea is to consider how the work will be shown and where it will be presented or exhibited. Such work needs a nice fit, as the frame doesn’t only serve as a counterweight to the works dynamics, but acts as a mediator between the work (its motif, colour pallet, even size and composition) and the surrounding space.

A nice classically painted still life would be well off if incased inside a thick golden frame when presented in a baroque or rococoesque environment, but place it inside a 19th century study with wooden walls and tweed or leather furniture and it’ll look misplaced. Here, a simpler wooden frame in subtle earthy tones will be a much better choice.

And obviously IKEA frames for anytime you wish to present your art in modern homes, where such a style is predominantly being used by millennials and baby-boomers alike.

The main point to take home is to not put frames on abstract work, because artist’s decisions in the 1920s and 30s to completely forgo the use of frames were made for a very good reason — they really confuse the vibe of modernist works. 

But if you have to, go with a simple floating frame or similar type — obviously sometimes people don’t like the rough edges of works painted on canvas and this is a way to make it more presentable without heavily influencing the work’s narrative.

But if modernism isn’t your cup of tea, then framing is a delicate and important factor of any finished painting and should be given a good amount of thought. Of course if we sell the work after we created it, the choice should be decided with the commissioner’s wishes in mind and when exhibiting, our best bet is to just choose frames that compliment the work and are subtle enough to not stand out too much when used in various exhibition spaces — most of which will be white cubes anyway.