I found out recently that some people buy a painting and then get it framed to match their decor. In other words, they try to match the finish of the frame to the finish of their furniture or their floors.
Please don’t do this. If you want something on your walls that matches your decor, get something that was intended to be decorative. Don’t try to turn an original painting or drawing into a component of your interior design.
If you don’t immediately see why original art is not interior decoration or a piece of furniture, consider whether you demand that the people in your house also match your decor. Do you ask visitors to wear clothes that go with the colours of your walls, floor, or the finish on your furniture? How about your own clothes? Do you buy them with your interior design in mind? Do you choose your hair colour that way? How about your pets? A drawing or painting is not a piece of furniture. It has character. It has depth. If you give it the attention it deserves, it will speak to you. Viewing it as merely decorative is disrespectful, just as it would be disrespectful to view your family, friends, and pets as merely decorative.
A work of art, if it’s any good, stands on its own. If you try to force it to be a piece of furniture, you will end up inadvertently killing it. Because the artist pours their soul into their work, the result, in some ways, is more like a person than an object. Just as you would with people, you have to let works of art be.
This sort of thing is the reason I never sell a work unframed. (Only once did I ever hand something over unframed, and I regret it to this day.) When you buy a work of art from me, I deliver it framed and ready to hang. I usually even include a hanging hook. Since my tastes in framing have changed over time, and since I initially framed my own work and then worked with two excellent framers (one in New Jersey and one in Ottawa), you can usually determine, from the frame on a painting, roughly where and when I painted it.
The frame is a part of the finished work of art, and it is too important to leave to the buyer. A person who does not have extensive experience with frames can easily ruin a work of art with a poor choice of frame. The wrong frame can make a work look cheap or change its focus. It can make it impossible to see the work the way it was intended to be seen. After years of choosing frames for my paintings, I still make mistakes. It is very difficult, while holding a small piece of moulding next to the corners of a painting, to imagine what the painting will look like when it is surrounded by that moulding. But when I make a mistake, I fix it. I put a lot of time, energy, and love into my paintings, and when I sell them, I want them to be good all the way to the frame.
The finished work of art is a collaboration between me and my framer. Once I have completed a painting, I let it dry, and I varnish it. I then take it to my framer, and we work together to choose a frame for it. Often, the choice is not obvious, and it takes time to consider different possibilities and arrive at the best option. I have a close relationship with my framer, since we spend hours together. Once we have made a choice, my framer puts the finishing touches on the work by framing it. I would recommend that other artists work with a framer as well. Don’t be so desperate to sell your work that you will allow a buyer to ruin it with a poorly chosen frame. The frame is a part of the work. Without the frame, the work is unfinished. When you sell a work unframed, you are trusting the buyer to finish it correctly. You might as well leave the painting or drawing itself unfinished.
A wrong choice of frame is not always immediately obvious. I once chose a frame moulding for a painting that seemed like it was made for that painting. A good choice of frame can feel like a continuation of the painting. This frame seemed like it was a continuation, but because of its size and shape, and because of the size of the painting, it ended up overpowering the painting. The particular painting was all about the light, but one could not see or feel any of that light in the framed painting. It looked like the sort of object one would expect to see in a warm, cozy house overcrowded with furniture, books, family photographs, and postcards. Such a house might be pleasant to live in or visit, but the cozy look did not work with this painting. Finally, I had it reframed, and it was able to shine with the light I had put into it. (When looking at the photographs below, please ignore the colours, which are, as always, distorted. The framing, in both cases, is excellent. The question is whether the frame allows one to actually see the painting that is inside it. It’s impossible to answer just by looking at a couple of photographs, but you can get an idea.)


The choice of frame should depend on the painting. Something in the frame should be a continuation of something in the painting. It can be a texture, a colour, or a shape. But one has to be very careful with this. It is easy to pick a colour inside a painting and match the colour of the frame to it, but depending on the colour you pick, the overall effect and meaning of the work can change significantly.
For example, I picked a white frame for the painting on the left because it is about the snow. For the one on the right, I chose a darker, purple-gray frame because the painting is more about the shadows than about the snow. (By the way, you should always look at a painting straight on, not diagonally as in this photograph.)

In the case of the silverpoint drawing below, I chose delicate colours to avoid overpowering the drawing. I chose a silver inner mat and a silver-accented frame because the drawing was literally drawn with silver. Choosing the right shade of white for the outer mat was especially tricky. My framer and I went through dozens of white mats with different shades and textures. (The photograph, as always, distorts the colours.)

Please respect artists, and respect framers. If you despair that the world is becoming overcrowded with cheap junk mass-produced by the suffering of sweatshop workers, take note that artists and framers are still working with their hands, still making one-of-a-kind items, with thought, with care, and with love. Don’t expect them to match the prices of mass-produced junk. Quality does not come cheap. And it is by supporting artists and framers that you will keep them in our world.
If you happen to own a piece of unframed original art, find a professional framer, preferably one recommended by a professional artist, and allow them to pick a frame that will set off the work of art in the best way possible, so that it shines.