The new trend thats too new

When was the last time you walked through a contemporary art gallery? Ever notice the 1/8 inch thick layer of epoxy resin on some of the paintings? It’s a trend that has slowly crept into the modern artists consciousness over the last 10 years. And I’ve been watching its arrival.

Well, its here. Not ony is it here but it’s bought land and built a house on Looked Like A Good Idea at The Time Avenue.

Being a traditionalist in the way that I build my paintings, my methods have been tried and true for centuries. I build my paintings to last, otherwise I woulden’t care about the pigments’ lightfastness. But I do, because I want them to last a long time.

So here’s how I was taught to build a painting…

1. Stretch your canvas onto wooden stretcher frames (see helpful Phil above)
2. Coat front and back with polyvinylacetate sizing, to seal the fibers of the canvas
3. Prime the front with two coats of gessoe, sanding between each coat
4. Start with a pencil, charcoal or paint sketch
5. Work in 3 layers, increasing the amount of “fat” or oil in your paint as you go to the next layer. Layer 3 should have the most oil, while the first layer should have the least. This is known as painting “fat over lean.” It’s one of the tried and true methods I was talking about. Using the fat over lean method creates “cross-linking” at the molecular level of the paint film between each layer of paint. This reinforces your painting with each layer bonding to the next as you work.
   Secondly, use a paint medium as you paint… this is where you are adding or decreasing the amount of fat in your mixtures. You should be using three different pre-mixed mediums… thin (which is usually more turp than oil), medium (50 fat to 50 turp) and fat (80 fat to 20 turp). But you should use a full recipe for mediums which are available on the net. As you increase the amount of fat in you painting, the longer it will take to dry and cure.
6. Six months after the oils have fully cured, its varnish day! Use a varnish that was NOT included in your medium mixture. If you used an alkyd medium to build your paint layers, use a damar in your varnish. Never, ever use the same one as both in your paint layer and as your varnish. The varnish layer is always meant to be removable for cleaning. When a painting ages and discolours, its not the paint thats changing, its the varnish.

So now you know what I know. Its the way I was trained.

But here’s my dilemma… a 1/8 thick coating of this epoxy resin layer hasn’t been around long enough for anyone to really know how stable it is and how long it will last. No one has tested it. So let’s say someone pays $25,000 for a painting with one of these coatings. Five years from now, he drops it while moving and it cracks. What happens then? It’s highly probable the coating will bond to the paint. How do you repair something like that? Okay, let’s say it doesn’t bond, but cracks off… now you have a 1/8 deep cut into your painting. How do you repair something like that? Okay, let’s say it doesn’t crack off but just splits along the surface. Will the painting now be predisposed to blooming in the summer?

You see, that’s the problem. No one knows because it hasn’t been here long enough. My other dilemma is with the buyers. It’s fair to say that if we discover that “Oops, It Really Was A Bad Idea – The Movie” has been playing all along, then we’ll most likely stop using these coatings on works of art. Unfortunatley when that day arrives, you can bet your entire lunch money AND Oreo cookies that every buyer of these types of paintings will be screaming at an artist for being… well, an artist!

Apparently there is supposed to be quite a big debate going on about this… but I don’t have tickets.

Tags: damar, epoxy resin coating, fat over lean, gessoe, lightfast, permanent, polyvinylacetate