Text as Art

I have been seeing an interesting trend in the art that our customers at Canada on Canvas have recently been sending us. The trend is Text Art, and in reminds me both of the concrete poetry of the 1950's, and of the tradition of embroidered samplers. It is always interesting when old traditions get re-cycled and re-vamped by new technology.

Writing is perhaps our second-most common means of communication. In the past, we used to write letters to those we loved to share our feelings. Nowadays writing is more ephemeral. Whether it is an email or a text message, we read it and forget it.

But it seems that people still value heartfelt words, and look for ways to preserve their thoughts and send them to loved ones. Recently at Canada on Canvas, we have received many orders for canvas prints that are not photos or even images at all, they are made up entirely of text. Usually these will be collections of memories or thoughts about the person the gift is for, letting them know all the ways they are cared about and appreciated. We always say that when giving gifts it is the thought that counts, and these original people have discovered a way to give the thought itself!

Text is the perfect way to convey a message, but it is also a visual form that can be beautiful in itself. In the 1950's poets and artists experimented with the visual quality of text to produce pieced that combined the visual and the linguistic. With the renewed interest in typography and design, there has recently been a new interest in this type of art. Many digital artists are investigating the possibilities of text or font-based art with exiting results.

There are also some great tools on the internet that can generate text art out of text that you make. One is Wordle, which will create a “text cloud” based on the most used words in your text.

Here is one I created using the text of this blog post there are also many online tools that will create ascii art. They allow you to feed an image into the programme and it “writes” it using keyboard characters. Digital artists and designers can create personalized images that combine art and text in innovative and beautiful ways. At Canada on Canvas we can print these images on fine art paper or canvas, creating one of a kind gifts or wall decorations.

Fathers Day is coming up in June, and what better way to let dad know what you really mean to him than with a canvas print cataloguing the memories that you treasure, or the lessons he has taught you. Often these things go unspoken...but they deserve to be recorded and remembered.

Classic Art Prints from Canada on Canvas

At Canada on Canvas we we know how important art is in people's lives. Art can make you happy, it is something beautiful that can be enjoyed by everyone. Canada on Canvas believes that everyone can be and artist. We know this because very day we create Fine Art giclees from the stunning photos and art images send us by our customers. We also host an online art gallery of Canadian artists, helping them with selling their art more easily. We believe that the single best thing about Giclee printing is that it can help make art available to everyone.

We also know that Art, specifically painting and drawing, has a long history. Painters like Renoir, Monet, and Cezanne, people who worked in many different times in history and in countries in the world, are still loved today for the striking, beautiful, and sometimes unsettling images that they produced. Many of these images have become iconic, like Van Gogh's “starry night” , but many more are less well known, but are just as beautiful and interesting.

To view a selection of some of the best classic art of the past, visit the Classic Art Gallery at CanadaonCanvas.com, where we have a gallery of high resolution images of many great artists. The best part is, all of these images can be ordered as a giclee canvas print in a variety of sizes for only the price of the print. Because we use the highest quality of inks and canvas, and high resolution files of these classic art images, the canvas prints we make for you are as close as possible to owning the original painting.

Of course not everyone can own an original Morisot. The treasures of art are kept in museums so that they can be seen by everyone. But this art was made to be enjoyed, and a treasured painting is something you want to be able to see every day, not just once in a while. Fine art printing can let you own the painting for a tiny fraction of the the cost, and also allows and unlimited number of people to own the same painting, without taking away from the enjoyment of others. This is made possible due to fine art scanning technology, which convert the colours and brush strokes to digital information so that it can be reproduced digitally. The power to convert and image to digital has greatly increased the availability of fine art to its audience. A great example of this is the Google Art project, which has digitized and mapped dozens of galleries and thousands of artworks.

Digital images are great, but no one wants to look at a painting on a computer screen for very long. This is where giclee printing comes in. Before it was possible to print on canvas, the only way to hang a classic art piece in your own home was either to be a millionaire, or to purchase a poster print of the classic work. Paper, however, lacks the physical presence and texture of a classic painting. The giclee process has allowed printers a much greater choice in the materials they print on, and many companies not make canvas for the giclee process this canvas can be stretched in exactly the same manner in which artists and their assistants once stretched the canvas on which they worked. A canvas print is one step closer to the look and feel of the original and for this reason it has become a popular choice for art reproduction among artist and art lovers.

To view our Classic Art Gallery and order prints, please visit CanadaOnCanvas.com