The GNOME canvas is a generic engine for structured graphics that offers a rich imaging model, high performance rendering, and a powerful high-level API. Application programmers can use the canvas to create interactive graphics displays easily. Many GNOME applications use the canvas as their main display engine, some of them using the basic functionality provided by the canvas, and others by extending it for their particular needs. This paper describes the architecture of the canvas in detail and examines the way it is used in several GNOME applications.