Acrylic on canvas describes a painting made with acrylic paint on a stretched, primed canvas support. Since arriving on the market in the mid-twentieth century, acrylic has become one of the most widely used painting mediums in the world, prized by contemporary artists for its versatility, speed and durability.
Acrylic can be used thinly like watercolour, thickly like oil, or flat and bold for graphic effect, making it one of the most adaptable mediums available to the modern painter.
What makes acrylic paint distinctive
Acrylic paint suspends pigment in an acrylic polymer emulsion. It is water-based, so it can be thinned and cleaned up with water alone, and it dries quickly, within minutes to hours rather than the days an oil painting may need. Once dry, it forms a tough, flexible, water-resistant film.
This speed encourages a different way of working from oil. Artists can layer rapidly, rework freely and achieve crisp edges and bold colour without long waits between stages. Acrylic also resists yellowing and cracking over time, ageing very stably.
Acrylic compared with oil
The most significant difference between the two is drying time. Oil’s slow drying allows soft, gradual blending; acrylic’s fast drying favours quicker decisions and sharper marks. Acrylic colours can shift very slightly darker as they dry, whereas oils stay close to their wet appearance.
Neither is superior, they simply suit different sensibilities. Many contemporary artists work fluently in both, and some combine acrylic underlayers with oil finishing. Acrylic particularly suits painters who layer extensively, work at pace, or want vivid, stable colour with minimal studio complexity.
Collecting acrylic paintings
Acrylic paintings make excellent collector pieces, physically robust, colour-stable and easy to live with. When viewing one in person, look at the surface in raking light to appreciate the brushwork, the layering and any texture the artist has built up.
At Byard Art, many of the contemporary paintings in our Cambridge gallery are acrylic on canvas, ranging from richly worked abstracts to crisp figurative pieces.
