09/22/2026
For Held in Light: Fall 2026, I wanted to show a little more of what actually goes into building a gallery wall, because the goal is never to change the artwork. It’s to help you see how it may live in a real space.
Every artwork starts with a scan of the actual photograph. I use the dimensions of the printed image itself and never stretch, crop, reshape, or edit over the scanned artwork.
What I do edit is the frame, matting, room, placement, and lighting. Since our framing is custom, the outer proportions can look a little different depending on the mat and frame treatment (and the framing programs are only standard sizing - BORING). The printed image size always stays true.
Lighting is a huge part of it too.
The images we use online are adjusted to show the most accurate color possible on a screen, but frame and mat options online are limited. Once a physical print is hanging in a real room, it reacts to the light around it.
In my office, Moon Over Tuscany and Harvest read warmer because they’re getting artificial white light from above, natural window light, and warm lamp light from the right.
Sunflowers is the opposite. I let the overhead light take over that part of the wall because I wanted it to glow and pull forward.
There’s so much you can do with the lighting you already have.
For Moon Over Tuscany, we have two sizes, so I used the 11 × 14 here. The larger version has much more matting (shown in image 2), and would have eaten up half the wall and competed with Sunflowers. The smaller one works better for me here (at the end of the day, YOU are the one who needs to live with it and love it - POV my office in photo 3).
Also, Oak in the Rain is missing now because it sold. (YAY. I’m not rebuilding the whole setup, but I have recommendations for what could go there.)
I also moved my filing cabinets out for the photo. Normally, two bright blue cabinets sit under the artwork, and once they’re back, the wall feels balanced again.
During a private appointment, we can adjust lighting, move things around, compare works, and build a wall setup around your own room.
So, no gatekeeping here.
And yes, we use mockups online and in real life. ✨