Matting Your Artwork                                                                                                                                                                                   

A short introduction to matting your artwork, Part 1. In picture framing, a mat is a thin, flat piece of paper-based material included within a picture frame, which serves as additional decoration and more practically, it separates the art from the glass. Typically matting, if matched carefully and properly proportioned, helps draw the eye in towards the artwork, or towards a particular key element of the piece. However, while the mat is usually regarded as something to complement the piece, there are some examples of the mat being regarded by the artist as a part of the artwork. Mats are fairly adaptable in the visual sense. Since they are typically quite thin, they are able to be cut to “stack” inside of a frame, allowing for double, triple or quadruple matting in several colors.