Stretched or unstretched: what you are actually buying

A stretched canvas is fixed to a wooden frame — mine are 1.5-inch gallery stretchers with the paint carried round the sides — and arrives ready to hang. An unstretched canvas is the painting on its own, rolled around a tube, and needs a framer to stretch it before it goes on a wall. Almost everything in the catalogue is stretched. One piece isn't, and it's the biggest one I've made.

What stretched means here

Every stretched work is on 1.5-inch bars with the paint round the edges, so it hangs unframed with no raw canvas showing. It ships flat, corner-protected, boxed and insured within five business days, and you hang it on two hooks. Thirty-seven of the thirty-eight works ship this way, from No. 033 at 2ft x 2ft to the 6ft x 5ft No. 024, Anxiety on Canvas.

Why one work is unstretched

No. 039 is 108 x 60 inches — 9ft by 5ft. A stretched canvas that size doesn't go through a residential door, into most lifts, or onto a freight pallet without a crate the size of a wardrobe. So it's sold the way it has lived on the studio wall: loose, and shipped rolled in a tube. Any framer can stretch it on site in an afternoon, or it can hang as a drop from a batten, which is how it hangs in the studio.

How a rolled acrylic painting should travel

This is where the paint manufacturers are worth listening to. Golden Artist Colors, whose paint is on most of these canvases, publishes transport guidance for acrylics, and I follow it: the painting is rolled with the paint side facing out, because rolling paint-side in compresses the film; around a core of at least six inches, because a tighter roll stresses the paint; with a sheet of polyethylene at least 4 mil thick between the layers, not bubble wrap or thin plastic, which can imprint the surface. It's rolled and unrolled at room temperature — Golden notes acrylic films go brittle around 40°F, and the Canadian Conservation Institute puts the glass transition of acrylic paint at roughly 5 to 10°C, so a canvas that's been in a cold truck should sit for a few hours before anyone unrolls it.

What stretching costs

Stretching a large canvas in New York typically runs a few hundred dollars for bars and labour; a nine-foot piece with heavy cross-braced bars sits toward the top of that. I can arrange stretching and delivery inside the New York metro area as a quoted extra — ask before you order and I'll price it for your building.

Which to choose

Under 6ft on the long side, buy it stretched; that's how it's listed and there's nothing to add. If you're shipping abroad, moving soon, or buying something over 6ft, unstretched can be the better way to move it, and I'll unstretch a work on request for a large or overseas order.

FAQ

Do your paintings come framed?

No. They are gallery-stretched with painted edges and hang unframed. A float frame can be added by any framer.

How does a rolled canvas arrive?

Paint side out, around a rigid core of at least six inches, with a 4-mil polyethylene interleaf, in a heavy tube, insured — following Golden Artist Colors' transport guidance for acrylics.

Can I hang an unstretched canvas without stretching it?

Yes, from a wooden batten or with magnets on a steel strip. It reads as a hanging rather than a picture, which suits some rooms very well.

Will you unstretch a work to ship it abroad?

Yes, for works over four feet, on request, before dispatch.

Sources

About the author. Charles Black is a self-taught painter working in acrylic on canvas from a two-room studio at the back of a warehouse in Queens, New York, and the founder of ABB Collective. He has been posting the work as @abstractbyblack since 2022 and has placed paintings in bars, offices and private homes around New York. Questions about anything here: charles.s.black@gmail.com.

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