I am an artist who has been supporting myself and my children selling my paintings online for 10 years. Over that time, I’ve sold more than 2000 paintings to patrons all over the world. But I kept running into the same problem. . . how do you ship large paintings without paying an arm and a leg for shipping??
If you’re an artist, you know that it’s both expensive and labor intensive to pack and ship a painting larger than 30×40 inches. To get around it, you might even consider painting multiple-canvas pieces (so the piece could be stacked into a smaller box for shipping) or you might try shipping your painting after taking the canvas off its stretcher bars and rolling it up—but both of those solutions cause other problems.
For example, maybe you, or your buyer, doesn’t actually want a painting made up of several small canvases. And if your patron needs to have the painting re-stretched on their end at a local frame shop, it adds considerably to the cost of the painting, so that’s not ideal either.
I told my engineer brother about this problem several months ago, and said if he could come up with a really easy solution to the high cost of shipping, he’d make a lot of artists happy. And I stressed that it was very important for the buyer to not be put out by it either.
After several months of trying different designs and materials, I was amazed to see that he’d done it! He designed a new type of collapsible canvas that can be collapsed, rolled up securely for shipping, and then reassembled in 5 minutes using no tools—and the canvases are tight!
I’ve sold several paintings on these large canvases and have not had any negative feedback from customers. They really do go together easily! Several of my online artist friends have also sold theirs with great feedback.
His canvas invention has a patent pending and range in size from 2×3 feet all the way up to 5×8 feet. We work in the same huge studio on the Hudson River about 100 miles north of NYC. He handcrafts his canvases, and I paint on them.
Here’s a short video showing how easy it is to assemble the canvas when you get it:
Once you’re done painting, you basically just do those steps in reverse to ship it to your buyer. There’s a video showing that process too, right here.
This is really a revolutionary product for artists who like to paint BIG. As an added benefit, these canvases also come with their own packaging materials (which saves you money in that regard) and shipping them anywhere in the US is usually under $30!
If you like to paint large, take a look at GenieCanvas.com and see what you think!
Special thanks to Patty Baker for this tip, as well as sending in some photos of her paintings on collapsible Genie canvases.
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