Painting - To border or not to border ? That is the question

Painting - To border or not to border ? That is the question

Stemed from multiple conversations /w tafe teachers in different fields

What defines artworks, for example paintings , from prints and photographs. Especially now that you can print on canvas. The need for technical perfection by the artist became redundant many years ago.

I was trained years ago to leave a boarder on my drawings and to take into consideration the masking ( for framing ) that I was going to use .

That technique is now redundant.

Borders have fallen out of fashion.

But the border or edge in the case of paintings sets them aside from prints.

I often caught myself checking the edge of a painting to see if it was real or not, to see if it had the touch of humanity apon it. Or if it had been birthed from mechanical loins.

What I found was , that the border is just as interesting as the artwork itself

The border was defined by the mediums used , the techniques and the layering.

Washes , erasure , charcoal , paint, pencil , pastel and more

each with its own fingerprint which can never be replicated.

“You can always remove the border

But you can never get it back. It is unique...” Tristan Griffin 2012