TAKING A FRESH LOOK AT CANVAS

Canvas is a fascinating and versatile fabric; attractive, durable and lasting and we want to praise it in this short blog.

It has been used for centuries; for sailing ships that explored the world, for tents, shoes and a host of other products, including canvas bags. We at The Clever Baggers use canvas for our extensive range of exciting bags, carrying on a long tradition of using canvas creatively.

A dip in to the History of Art shows how great painters have made their mark by using canvas. Early oil paintings were painted on wood panels, but around the end of the 15th century canvas became more popular as it was cheaper, easier to transport and allowed larger works to be attempted. Renaissance and Venetian artists were pioneers of using canvas as an artistic medium, helped by the fact that sail-canvas in Venice was readily available and of high quality.  From then to this day, masterpieces of realism, impressionism, surrealism and modern art have been painted on canvas. Canvas has given us a record of portraits of famous and ordinary people from the past and of beautiful landscapes free of litter from plastic bags.

The world’s largest painting on canvas by a single artist is a fantastic Australian work of “super-realism” by “Ando”.  Painted in acrylic (3 tons of it!), the “Big Picture” captures the New South Wales outback in monumental scale, measuring 100 metres by 12 metres at its highest point.  The painting includes over one million saltbushes, 20,000 trees, 20,000 small stones, 1,000 large stones, 3,000 clouds, 2,000 buildings, 1,500 hills, 12 sculptures and not one plastic bag in sight!

It’s worth taking a look at www.andoart.com/bigpic.htm, but for those less ambitious, The Clever Baggers have a great range of fabric marker pens and crayons for you to get creative on our canvas bags, to follow in the footsteps of the great artists and to own a unique and personal, not to mention highly functional, work of art.