Finishing the Unfinished

This video is brought to you by Squarespace. From websites and online stores, to marketing tools and analytics, Squarespace is the all-in-one platform to build a beautiful online presence and run your business. Whether or not a painting is ever truly finished is something that artists will struggle with their entire working careers. But for this lovely painting of a small child, that debate is muddied by the condition of the painting. It is almost literally falling off of its support. The tacking edges are threadbare and deteriorated, causing distortions throughout the painting. The bottom edge has had water exposure, as evidenced by the tied lines on the wood and the rusted keys, and this has led to flaking and losses on the bottom edge. In addition, the canvas has deteriorated as a result, and there are some tears. We can also see some old retouching that has now discolored and is a distraction. Throughout the painting, there are creases, cracks, crinkles, wrinkles, divots, and dents that all distract us from the image, from the portrait, and from the artist's mastery. These distractions break the magic and take away our ability to see the work as the artist intended, and so we will have to contend with all of those. In addition, the old retouching and the old patch on the back will need to be removed. But there are some things that we will need to save, like the old strainer to which the painting is barely adhered. It contains important information, and we need to preserve that. The stamps and the labels, even as opaque as they are to us, are important, and at some point in the future, they may be critically important to determining the artist or the provenance of the piece. And so before we can have a debate about the merits of this painting and its quality or magic, we have some work to do in finishing the unfinished. You know, unlike this painting, which actually works unfinished, there are very few things in life that will. I mean, think about it. An unfinished car isn't going to get you anywhere, and an unfinished cheeseburger is going to get you in a lot of trouble. And you know what else isn't going to work unfinished? Your website. So finish it. Oh, you don't know how? Well, there's Squarespace for that. With Squarespace, an artist can take control of exposing the world to their artwork. Through a simple, easy, and fast process, you can create and launch a website in minutes. And not just a simple one, one that is fully featured, that is mobile-friendly and works everywhere, one that can expand as your needs change. Whether it's a gallery, a contact form, an e-commerce solution, you name it, Squarespace has it built in. And if building and maintaining a website seems scary, well, Squarespace has that covered too, with tutorials, videos, online forums, and real-life tech support to help you if and when you need. So head over to squarespace.com for a free trial, and when you're ready to launch, go to squarespace.com slash Baumgartner to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Because most of, if not all, of the work that this painting needs is of a structural nature, the frayed and deteriorated tacking edges, the distorted and dented canvas, and all of those little holes, I first need to separate the canvas from its strainer. Now, this is usually pretty easy, but here, because these nails have been exposed to moisture and have rusted in place, it's a little bit harder. It takes quite a bit of effort to separate them without damaging either the strainer or the canvas. But luckily for me, there are really only three or four tacks holding this whole painting together, so it's not a terrible amount of work. Once I have removed them, I can transfer the painting over and take a look at the back of the canvas and, of course, the strainer. I have plans for this, so I'm not going to do anything right yet. But I need to flip this canvas over so that I can clean the back off. Because it's so delicate, and there's flaking, and the canvas itself is a little bit threadbare, I'm going to flip it using two pieces of acid-free board. And this ensures that not only the front and the back are supported when I do go to flip it. If I were to just flop it over, I might put stress or tension on the canvas, and that could result in flaking or other damage that I want to avoid. Now, with it face down, I can start to use a brush to remove any of that accumulated dirt and debris. Sometimes when paintings are in storage, in basements, garages, or attics, stuff can accumulate. And this all needs to go because it doesn't belong in a painting, but also because the buildup can create bumps that will telegraph to the front of the painting and be problematic as we do our treatments. Another thing that I need to remove is that old patch. So I'm taking my favorite scalpel, and I'm going to remove the old dirty blade and replace it with a brand new blade. And I want a really sharp blade here because I want to slice this patch off. Sometimes a dull blade is what I want when I'm looking for tension on old glue, but here I want sharp. This is a wax resin adhesive. It's wax mixed with any number of different resins, and when it's hot, it acts as a glue, and then it dries. And this isn't really a patch. This looks like a piece of gauze. And so it's not a lot of material to remove, but it has to go. So once I've successfully pried up one of the corners, I can then switch to my hands and just peel off this gauze. It's not terribly complicated, but going slowly and making sure that I don't distort or damage the canvas is essential. With that gauze removed, I'm left with just the residue of the adhesive, which can be removed with a solvent mixture. It takes a few passes to break down the resin and the wax, but eventually the solvent does its job and all of the wax and resin is absorbed by the swab, and we have a clean canvas, which is precisely what we want. It is now at this point that I can take the painting and transfer it over to the back of the studio, to the hot table. And again, I'm going to do that with two boards, because this painting is fragile, and I will have to flip it one more time. Once at the prepared hot table, I will flip it, just make sure that I have it the right way, and then I'll transfer it over to the surface. Now the assembly of materials that I have here is acid-free cotton blotter paper. That's just a cotton rag paper that's compressed, that absorbs ambient moisture. I have a nylon release layer, and this is necessary because if there is any residue of adhesive on the back, or any sizing that gets reactivated, if I don't have this release layer, I'll effectively glue this canvas to the paper, and then removing it becomes a whole big problem in a mess. Trust me, I've made that mistake in the past, and so now I am cautious and make sure to use this release layer almost every time. I've created an envelope with a piece of mylar and some webbing that allows me to extract the air with those through-bag connectors and my vacuum pump. Once the vacuum pump is turned on, I can raise and then adjust the pressure, and then I can turn the heat on the table and let do its thing. I'll come back with a balsa wood brayer, which is soft, and just work the areas that might need a little bit of extra persuasion. Once the painting has come up to temperature, I'll turn the heat off, let the painting cool, and once it's at room temperature, I can then remove it from this envelope. Now even though the painting is flat now, the canvas has been relaxed, and all those distortions have been removed, it's in a perilous state, because if I leave it like this, they'll all come right back. Heating up the painting causes all of that moisture to kind of become active, and if I don't do anything to stabilize it, it's going to distort, and potentially even worse than it was before. So I'll take the painting over to another table, I'll remove the blotter paper and the release film, and then I'll put the blotter paper on top of the painting to protect it as I bring down a second sheet of sheetrock or drywall. Then a couple of very high-tech weights will go on top, and this painting will sit for a few days to release the ambient moisture and acclimatize to my studio. After a few days, we can see that the painting is still flat, which is exactly what we want. Now I can do the second treatment, and this is the adhesive impregnation. Because that paint was flaking on the bottom, it needs to be stabilized, and I could certainly do that locally just by painting on the adhesive in little areas with a little brush, but I'm concerned that this painting is unstable writ large across the whole surface. On top of that, this canvas is kind of threadbare, and I'm concerned that when I go to handle it and stretch it, it may tear. So I'm doing an adhesive impregnation wholesale on the whole painting. This is a conservation adhesive that's been heated up and thinned out to my desired consistency, and I'm rolling it on the back, and what it's going to do is penetrate into and through the canvas, adding some more support and stability for the canvas, but also up into those little nooks and crannies and voids where the paint is lifting from the ground or the canvas. And then we can do a treatment to stabilize all of this. After that adhesive has dried and all the solvents have left, just the solids, I'll bring it back to the hot table and I'll sandwich it in between two release films, and these are absolutely necessary because the whole painting, the back and some of the front, is covered with glue. And if I don't do this, I'm going to glue the painting down to the hot table, and I have learned this lesson the hard way multiple times when I have forgotten to use this release. Now luckily for me, when I come back and I find that I have presided over an unlikely marriage of canvas to aluminum, I can simply heat the painting back up and I can peel it off. But it's a royal pain in the... well, it's a royal pain, and I would like to avoid it. It's a waste of materials and time, and also it subjects the painting to unnecessary trauma. So that is why I use that release layer. And you can see here, I did not glue the canvas to anything. So good job, Julian. But with the painting now cool and stabilized, I can bring it over to the front table and I can start the repair of the tears. Now rather than using a gauze patch like was done in the past, I am going to do a technique called bridging. And this is where we take little strands of Belgian linen canvas, we fray the canvas and cut those strands off. We then dip those strands into an archival reversible conservation adhesive and then lay them down perpendicularly across the tear. And these act as sort of a butterfly suture, like a doctor would use, to hold and stabilize this so that it doesn't open up. There are many ways of repairing a tear. We don't use patches in my studio. I just don't believe that they're the best way. Now if I could reweave this canvas, I certainly would, but because it was previously conserved and worked on, I can't because all of those fibers have been lost and there's nothing to reweave. So this is the best approach for this painting, this client, and the timeline and restrictions that we have. Now once I have laid down all of these little strands, I'll clean up the excess adhesive with a little brush and then I'll cover it all up with another piece of release film and a piece of felt because I don't want to glue the felt to the back of the painting and learn another hard lesson. After a day or so, I'll come back and I'll remove the release film when the glue is mostly dry and then just put the felt down and leave it for a couple more hours or days and then I can come back and see that everything is exactly how I want it. The structural work continues with the support of the tacking edge. This painting barely has one and we need to add some material to ensure that we can secure it to the stretcher. But instead of lining the whole painting with a new piece of canvas, we're going to do what's called a strip lining or edge lining depending on who you ask. That's where we take a piece of Belgian linen canvas and fray the edges and adhere it to the edge. The fraying is important for two reasons. One, it creates a soft transition between the new canvas and the old, reducing the risk that we telegraph that crisp transition to the front. And also, it creates more surface area for the adhesive and creates a better and stronger bond. I'm using the same adhesive that I did for the impregnation except this time in a film form. Because it's heat activated, I can remove the paper backing, go over it with my iron, and that will bond it down to the canvas. I can then release the top layer of release film. I can situate the canvas where I want it. I can orient it precisely along the edge and then I can come back with my iron and start bonding it down. I'll follow the iron with a weight with a piece of red oak attached to the bottom and this is effectively what's called a clapper. It allows me to put pressure and the oak will absorb and remove the excess moisture so that the canvas doesn't distort as it dries. Now normally, I would lay the canvas here but because this edge is so damaged, I'm going to bring it up a little bit more to about there and that's going to again just ensure that I have the maximum amount of fidelity so that when it does go back onto the stretcher, it doesn't tear or otherwise be compromised. I'm going to fold over the edge, create a crease where I want it, and then I'll come back with my scissors and just cut this extra off and I'll save all of this extra canvas and eventually use it or not and keep it here for five or ten or fifteen years before I throw it away. A lot of things here have a way of lingering around well past their expiration date but I digress. We are now on to the cleaning process which is going to be exciting. It always is. This painting is not terribly dirty. I tested it when it arrived at the studio and found that there is really no surface grime on the painting but there is a discolored varnish and so using a solvent mixture that I previously tested on the painting, I'm able to lift off that varnish layer and at first it seems like there's no change and I wonder is this actually going to clean up? My swab is not dark black or brown like it sometimes is. This is not a night and day transition so is it really necessary and worth it? Well of course the answer is yes for a lot of reasons but you can see it actually is resulting in a change and we're seeing a purer cleaner color and this is what the artist wanted us to see. So yes we have to take off this old varnish. So I will continue working in small isolated sections so that I don't get ahead of myself so that I can control the cleaning process and I'll lift off all of this old varnish and reveal what's underneath. Now another thing that I need to remove is the old overpainting. This was added by the last person who worked on this and added the gauze patch because it needs to go. This was done in oil paint and the reason we don't use oil paint is twofold. One, it discolors over time. This may have been accurate at one point but as the oil oxidized it darkened and the color changed so it no longer matches. And two, well it's really difficult to remove. I have to use a fairly aggressive solvent gel to break down that oil paint and you're wondering, I know, why it removes the retouching or the new oil paint and not the old, the original paint. Well that's because the new retouching is less oxidized than the original paint. It's newer so it's more susceptible and vulnerable to this solvent. With all of that removed I can then begin the process of putting this piece back together. Now because there was losses on the bottom I have to fill them in and eventually I'll do that with retouching and my fill-in medium but before I do that I have to add some ground because the fill-in medium doesn't like to stick to raw canvas. That ground once dry will provide a really stable surface for this fill-in medium to bond to. This fill-in medium is chalk based. It's something that conservators have been using for ages because it goes on fairly easily, it's somewhat flexible so it won't crack, and it provides a fantastic base for retouching. And in addition to that it's also sculptable. In this case with a small fan brush that allows me to add just a few brush strokes so that it matches the surrounding paint. Once that fill-in medium is dry I can come back with a dampened cotton swab and remove the excess. I only want the fill-in medium where the losses are, not all over the painting. And so just like I did on the face I'll come back and remove all of that excess to make sure that only where paint is missing is fill-in. I mentioned earlier that this strainer was important because it has some stamps and some labels. And I want to save it but I don't want to just mount it to the back of the new stretcher that I had fabricated for the painting because that would make it too deep. And the solution begins by disassembling this strainer. And the first thing I have to do is pry off these little corner braces which are really really on there. These rusted out nails make it really hard to get them off. But I'm going to remove all of those rusted out nails and then I can take this strainer over to my table saw and start ripping it down. I thought about disassembling it first but those nails are really rusted and the wood is deteriorated and I was concerned that if I started to tinker with it it would just disintegrate. So I'm just going to cut right through those nails. And yes I know that takes life out of my table saw blade but I can have the blade sharpened or I can replace it or just use it as a disposable item. You can see where those tacks embedded and secured themselves into the wood. Now I ripped it down to about a quarter of an inch and I can orient it on the back of the strainer. And even with these additional braces it's really only three-eighths of an inch thick so it's not a ton of mass to add to the back of the stretcher. Once I've marked my positions I'm going to come with a forstner bit and drill some holes through this strainer. I need to have some way of mounting it to the stretcher. I don't want to nail it and I don't want to glue it so I'm going to use some screws but that comes later. For now we have to marry this canvas to the new support. Once I've oriented this painting onto the new support which is going to provide better support for this painting because it will allow me to key it out or anybody in the future. And the keying is really important because it allows us to add tension to the canvas so that it doesn't become slack because a slack canvas is the first thing that leads to flaking and we don't want that. And for me the stretching process begins by securing a few tacks in the center of each side so that the middle of the painting is taut and then we work from the center out taking any slack in the canvas to the corners where we have a better chance of removing it either by pulling the canvas tighter or by waiting till the keying process to remove that tension. It's not a fairly complicated process but of course I can say that because I've done it oh a good 10 or 15,000 times over the life of my career. It becomes second nature. Tack, cut, trim, repeat. I'll trim off the excess canvas in the corners so that we don't have a massive canvas there which can get complicated when it comes time to frame it. And then I'll start using some smaller lighter weight tacks to secure this extra canvas in place. Some people like to cut it off, some people glue it down. This is just the way that I do it because I think it looks really pretty. It's also kind of a zen moment for me to treat the back as I do the front and make it look as good as I can. Because this is a stretcher I can add keys and I'll do it one at a time and tap it in just a little bit and this is going to tighten this canvas just enough so that there's no slack. After the keys are in place I'll use some fishing line through some holes I drilled and an extra tack to hold them in place so they don't get lost or fall in between the canvas and the strainer and create a dent. Now it's on to varnishing. Now I haven't retouched this painting yet. I'm going to do that after I apply the varnish. The reason for that is twofold. One, it's not a lot of retouching so I'm confident that I don't need to wait until afterwards. Sometimes with a lot of retouching you can get uneven areas with the retouching and so you want to wait until afterwards to apply the varnish. And here it's also so that I have a better chance of mixing those colors. With the varnish now applied I know exactly what the painting looks like so I can match my colors to this. And I've applied the varnish and I'll continue to brush it out so that it gets a really beautiful sheen. I don't want this matte and I don't want it glossy. I just want it kind of velvety or sparkly. And as the solvent evaporates and the resin remains, I can add kind of a micro texture which is exactly what I want. It captures the light really well, it diffuses it, and it's not really reflective. And now on to retouching, which shouldn't be fairly difficult but I do need to be conscious of one thing and that's adding a resin mixture to the paint so that I can bring the gloss level up so that it matches the sheen of the varnish I just applied. After the retouching is all complete, I can finally marry that old strainer with the new stretcher. And once I orient it in place and figure out which is the top, bottom, left, and right, I'll then use some screws to screw it in place. And the reason that I made those holes oversized was so that there's some play. Because if I didn't do that, this strainer would effectively turn the stretcher into a strainer. It would become rigid and there'd be no ability for somebody in the future to key out that stretcher and add tension. Because when you key out a stretcher, it gets slightly bigger. So by having a little bit of play in these holes, I can ensure that the stretcher can be expanded. And this is precisely why I needed to make sure there was a need to be glued into place. And right now, this is where it becomes a rigid support. So without that play in those holes, this would have been a really bad decision. But because I had the foresight, it's not going to be. So a little bit of glue, a couple of weights, a couple of days, and we are all finished. So here is our lovely little unfinished painting. Now finished. In its unfinished state, but just in a more finished state. That's a debate that can go on and on. And I'm sure everybody has an opinion about whether this painting is finished or not. But the interesting thing is that now we can have that debate. We can look at the painting itself, free of all distractions that were problematic beforehand. The losses, the holes, the tears, the bad retouching, and of course, the distortions and how the painting was kind of falling off of the strainer. Now all of that has been taken care of, and we can focus on the image, both what's completed and what's not completed. We can debate whether the artist made this conscious decision as a stylistic choice or whether they got lazy and kind of lost interest in the piece. But having that debate is really important. And that wasn't possible beforehand. The painting is now stable, it's structurally sound, we've taken care of the strainer while preserving it for the future, we haven't lost any of it or its integrity, and we've maintained all of the provenance so that somebody in the future can have that. Even if we don't value it now or understand its importance, that doesn't alleviate us of the responsibility for preserving it, which is what we did. One final thought. Some people may believe that seeing the painting in an unfinished state diminishes the quality of magic that paintings have, that we're seeing the seams, so to speak. But I think the opposite. Seeing that this painting was created by our hands with paint and brushes, well, it kind of adds to the magic that captures us. No?