Summer #7 Green Field and Sky

Summer #7 Green Field and Sky 6" x 12" oil on panel

I was attentive to using archival painting methods even as a student, dutifully gessoing canvases with four to six coats. I learned more about mold and water damage through a storage space flood in 1998. More recently, scratches, tears, and dents in large paintings in my January move are pointing me to taking out art conservation books from the library to aid me in their repair. I know it all will be dust someday but I would like a few people to see them first.

I'm reevaluating my choice of painting medium. Now I use either Windsor and Newton's Liquin or Gamblin's Galkyd Lite. I like them, no real complaints, and am unsure there is any real issue. I'm considering the argument that paint thinner does just that and perhaps weakens the archival integrity of a painting. Painter Ron Rizzi, for whom I worked as a studio assistant, thought so, at least back then. The substances used to suspend pigment for their application to a support is key in conservation. Mark Rothko's recipes are very problematic for conservators. The Rothko chapel in Houston underwent a $1.8 million renovation restoring the structure as well as the paintings which had problems due to light damage and the make up of the paint Rothko made himself.

"For the red, as well as for the plum of the seven monochromes, Rothko used pigment dissolved in warm rabbit-skin glue, which produces a thin, transparent wash of color. The rectangles, a velvety, matte black, turned out to be an egg-oil emulsion: a concoction of whole egg, oil paint, dammar resin and turpentine, made fresh each day without a recipe."

From the article, ARTS IN AMERICA; Restoring Rothko's Chapel and His Vision

By SHAILA K. DEWAN

Published: June 15, 2000

In graduate school I made a few paintings using De Kooning's recipe of safflower oil and water as a medium for oil paint. Yellow One from 1995 is an example:

44" x 36", oil on canvas

I was working in an Abstract-Expressionist style, so the slippery paint maximized the fluidity of gestural brushstrokes. I don't fully remember why I stopped using it except that I wasn't completely satisfied. De Kooning liked it because it kept paint soft and fluid, requisite for his method of painting all day and scraping off the canvas at the end so as to have a clear surface the next morning.

I've started using the paint alone with a little stand oil when needed for fluidity. I've done this before but it might work better for me now that my work is smaller and I don't have to cover such large areas.

Taking care of art objects is often difficult and sometimes painstaking. It involves the sacrifices of money, space, and time. Conservation can take longer than it did to make the art (not that time is a good measure for evaluating the quality of a picture). If I had an unlimited budget I could provide secure transport, climate controlled storage, and the choicest supplies for my work. I take good care of things, but I am compromised. It is a burden (consider this before working large) and I am resigned to the inadequate means of preservation at my disposal and accept, with some pangs, the accompanying losses. This is what is on my mind as I unwrap paintings from my January move and assess damages. I am moving them from my garage into a new backyard shed (it's a lovely shed). We hope to get our cars to fit in the garage as we are told that the salt in the Rhode Island ocean air will corrode them. Hopefully the shed will also keep the salt at bay (bad pun, not that I have to tell you).

I don't mean to ignore Summer #7 Green Field and Sky. I don't think of conservation when I look at it. It's a reassuring image. It says, "Forget what you're worrying about and focus on what is important." It is something to dwell on.