About Us

It started in the Kansas City Art Institute wood shop.

Jeffrey Barron was a freshman artist... learning to draw & paint, and build his own stretchers and panels. He was taught how to correctly stretch & prime canvas. He learned about traditional and modern materials. 

After moving to New York following grad school, poverty required that he build his own canvases and panels in the Williamsburg loft where he was squatting.  He had just a tiny table saw and a cordless drill.  A few of his artist friends asked for some of his stretchers. Then a few more.  And so it began.  He called it "Barron Fine Art Services" and he had one employee: Himself.

Being a painter/multi-media artist as well as a woodworker was a huge advantage for Barron, as he had the unique ability to speak to aesthetics & painting-mediums as well as  material/structural issues at the same time.  

He would build stretchers & panels and deliver them on the roof of his small car during the day, and paint at night.  Bigger studio space was needed, so Barronarts (shorter name made more sense) moved to a much larger space in the Gowanus area of Brooklyn in the mid-90's.

Business increased as more and more artists became aware of these high-quality, yet affordably-priced stretchers and panels. The other options were terribly overpriced stuff from another builder in Brooklyn, and low-quality imports at the discount art stores. Barronarts quickly become a studio of innovation, building complicated shapes and large folding structures that no one else could.

More growth was needed and in the mid-2000’s, Barronarts moved to their current location...a spectacular 7,000 sq. ft. studio in the Brooklyn Navy Yard overlooking the East River. 

Larger machines, bigger space and collaborations with other Navy Yard businesses saw Barronarts grow immensely over the next decade, working with notable artists like Elizabeth Murray, Sean Scully and Jack Whitten, as well as most of the major galleries & museums in the New York City area.

Jeffrey Barron and Barronarts has been honored as an Outstanding Employer by Brooklyn Workforce Innovations in 2018, and also as a 2019 All-Star honoree at the Brooklyn Entrepreneurs Awards in 2019.