Vault II by Petra Jensen, oil on canvas

Large oil on canvas from the Vaults series, by Petra Jensen, titled Vault II

In many common canvas preparation techniques, a piece of canvas is stretched around a wooden support known as a stretcher or strainer; the support is smaller than the canvas, the canvas is stretched around support, and the canvas is fixed to the sides or back of the support using either nails or (later) staples. The canvas preparation technique used here comes from the Dutch Golden Age painters: a wooden frame larger than the canvas was used stretch canvases and make them taught before painting. In this technique, a rectangular section of canvas is prepared with a reinforced edge and the canvas is positioned on the interior of the wooden support. String is sewn through a reinforced edge, then looped around the wooden frame, then sewn through the reinforced edge again. This process is repeated along all the edges, until the canvas is fixed in the centre of the wooden support. We found that this process allowed us to easily adjust tension by pulling on individual strings, and it was possible to achieve an evenly stretched canvas surface.