Printing on Canvas as History

What’s always somewhat fascinating is how some ideas become so powerfully pervasive in everyday life we stop thinking critically about them and simply accept them, never seeing alternatives. Take, for example, one of the most popular uses for printing on canvas: The family portrait that gets updated every year or two, often hung together with each previous iteration to provide a sort of visual thumbnail of the family history. It’s a powerful moment in any room and serves as a reminder of the riches every family has to celebrate.

This has become such a common and accepted concept in interior decoration that no one stops to think if maybe the concept of a visual history might not be effective in other ways. Showing the changes that have happened in a space can be a moving focal point – and not just when the subject is your family.

Looking Back: Dream Home Edition

One powerful way to use the ‛history in images’ technique of multiple canvas prints (or metal prints or acrylic prints, of course) is to track the awesome renovations you do in your house. Most people wind up remaking their homes substantially over the years, starting off with an older ‘fixer’ and ending up with their dream home. If that’s you, than a photographic installation that starts off with the original rough canvas of a place and tracks its transformation can be powerful – and fascinating. You can have a separate installation for each room of the house, in fact.

It’s also a great way to capture those occasional surprises you find in a renovation, things you’re delighted to discover but can’t really keep in your new vision. Like old newspapers found when you open the walls, or secret height-markings from kids that once lived there. A crisp photo and some affordable prints, and you get to keep the history without having to keep the old walls and floorboards.

Printing on Canvas: The Journey Edition

Maybe you’re not planning to renovate, but you’ve come a long way. A lot of couples can look back in amazement on their journey from the run-down studio apartment in the bad part of town to the incredible house with the acre of land they raised their family in. Snapping photos as you move up the ladder is a great way to capture the personal history of your living spaces in gorgeous digital photo printing that simultaneously records where you’ve been and compares it to where you are now, while crystallising your memories of each and every place you’ve put down roots.

For bonus points, you can include photos of old room-mates, neighbours, landlords, or house-guests, turning your installation of wall art into not just a history of places, but of people as well – people who will then be delighted to be invited to your landing place and find themselves enshrined on the walls!

Ideas sometimes get frozen – and that’s where you have to jolt yourself with a creative idea. When you’re ready to begin your own history project, click here and we’ll help you create some stunning pieces.