The Forest For The Trees

This video is brought to you by Babbel. Learn a new language through real-life conversations. Upon first glance, this landscape painting by the Swedish painter Alfred Jansson doesn't appear to be all that problematic. Take a closer look and we can see right off the bat that there's quite a large hole in the foreground that needs to be addressed. In addition, the paint layer has a There are chips and nicks throughout. And in the recesses of the impasto, we can see the old varnish that was never properly removed. It has pooled and darkened over time. In addition, though it's hard to see, the canvas is very heavily distorted. It has bowed and rippled and warped over time. And this is problematic because it catches the light and it makes it hard to see the actual painting, or the forest for the trees, if you will. And as we take a closer look, we can start to see some of those distortions a little bit clearer, but there is one way that we can see them very prominently, and that's not with regular visible light. That's with raking light from the side or the bottom. And right off the bat, we can start to see just how distorted this canvas really is. And these are not only visual intrusions, but they put the structure of the painting at risk. These become brittle, and then over time, they'll crack and the painting will start to fall apart. Now, I know a little bit about Janson by way of working on his paintings, but the best way to learn about him and his theory about art is to speak his language and be able to read his writings. And that's where Babbel comes in. Babbel teaches real-world conversations and prepares you to have practical conversations about everything from travel to business, relationships, and even artwork. It's pretty simple. Fire up your smartphone, add in a couple of parameters about yourself, how much time you have, what you'd like to get out of the language learning process, and there you go. Babbel will start you right off. What's even better is that you can set goals for yourself so that you can guide your learning process. You can choose how proficient you want to be, how much time you have, and then Babbel will put together a lesson plan that allows you to have a little bit of flexibility to learn wherever it's comfortable and easiest for you. So when you're ready to prepare for that vacation, connect with loved ones, or just challenge yourself, head over to Babbel, where you can get 60% off on your subscription by clicking the link below. All right, so after we know that Julian can't speak Swedish and Kit can, we can turn our attention back to the painting. And the first thing that we have to do is separate the painting from the frame. Now this painting has been bonded into this frame with adhesive paper. Framers often do this to make things tidy, but ultimately this is just a pain in the neck to have to peel back all of this paper tape that is glued down to the frame and to the stretcher support. I wish they wouldn't do this, and if any framer is listening, oh please stop doing this. Luckily this is very deteriorated and they just did it on top of the old paper, so it comes right off. I have to pull out these little offset clips, which I'm thankful for. That's a good thing, framers. Keep doing that instead of using nails or staples. But just maybe ease up on the paper. Now the last time this painting was worked on, somebody thought that in addition to the tacks that were there, some staples would be beneficial. I don't understand why, because they're not, but I have to get rid of both, because this painting needs to come off of the stretcher support. So I will pull all of these tacks and staples out, and once I've done that, I can flip the painting over and start removing it from the stretcher support. Luckily it's not glued down or anything, so it does come off fairly easily. A little palette knife slid in between makes sure that there isn't anything binding and that it doesn't come up when I pull the stretcher off. Now this painting was lined in the past, probably to address the hole and the other tears, but this lining doesn't look to have been very good. You can see that the glue is, well, it's not really glue at this point. This is rabbit skin glue, and in theory it should have stuck, but in reality it didn't. This is not really a lining at all. I mean, it just kind of lifts right off, which is great for me, until I see that it is covered with mold. The lining and the painting are moldy, and this is one of the failures of rabbit skin glue, because it is hygroscopic, it will absorb ambient moisture, and so in a very humid environment, the glue itself can become contaminated. It can start to rot, and it can start to mold. And then you have a painting that not only has a failed lining, but it's covered in mold. Now I'm going to have to address that, but the first thing I need to do is start to address these very heavy distortions that we saw earlier in the raking light. Now normally I would put the painting directly on the hot table to get rid of some of these distortions, but these are very heavy, and this canvas is very brittle, and so I don't want to run the risk that the vacuum pump cracks any of this canvas. So what I'm going to do is rehydrate this canvas in a sense. I'm going to bring it into my little greenhouse where I have a humidifier. I'm going to lay it down on some wire racks to allow adequate airflow on top and bottom, and then I'm going to start introducing moisture by way of humidity. I'm going to turn it up pretty high because I want a very, very damp environment, and I'm going to keep an eye on it because I want to control how long this painting is exposed to this humidity. I'll seal up this little tent, and then I'll let it be and see how it goes. After a few minutes in the tent, it doesn't take long in such a humid environment. I can come and remove the painting. Again, I don't want this to be wet. I just want the glue to soften up and the canvas to soften up as well. I want it to be more pliable for the next step. Remember, I don't want this to be too brittle such that the stress of the vacuum pump on the canvas causes it to crack or otherwise be compromised. That would be solving one problem and creating another, and I like to not do that. Now I am going to take this painting, and I'm going to transfer it to the hot table. But remember, there is rabbit skin glue all over the back, and if I put this directly on the absorbent cotton blotter paper, well, I'm going to glue this canvas down to the paper. I would say ask me how I know, but you folks already know that I have glued a painting to the blotter paper before, and that's how I know not to do that. I'm using a nylon release film in between the paper. That's that kind of turquoise layer. It is permeable, so it allows moisture and air to pass through it, but it is also non-stick, so the rabbit skin glue won't bond to it and will allow me to remove the painting from the nylon and from the cotton blotter paper without any adhesion, which is really critical because I really, really, really don't want to glue this painting down to the paper. Now I am slowly drawing out all of the pressure. At times, I will draw out the air very quickly, but here I want to do it very slowly and very controlled just to gently relax that canvas down. Sometimes it's imperative to do this really quickly so that there's no distortions, but here, slow is the name of the game, and having a vacuum table that allows me to control that is really critical. Now a minute ago, I mentioned that the painting was covered in mold, and there are two ways of killing mold, either with chemicals or with heat, and because I don't want to saturate this painting with moldicide, I'm going to be using heat. I raise the temperature of the table up to a degree that will kill any active spores, and then I'll let the painting sit. I turn the heat off, I let it cool, and then I remove it from this envelope. And you can see all of that rabbit skin glue sticking to that nylon release film. That's fine. I can clean this release film or throw it away, but what didn't happen was the painting getting bonded to that blotter paper. That was the goal. And so now, with all of the mold spores killed, I can transfer the painting over to another table, cover it with felt, because there is a lot of impasto on this painting, and then bring down some weights on it and let it slowly acclimatize to the studio over the period of a couple of days. After the painting has acclimatized to the studio's humidity over the course of a few days, I'll transfer it back to the front room and I'll flip it over in between two acid-free sheets of foam core. When I handle paintings and transfer them, I keep them on acid-free foam core whenever possible. And now I can start to think about removing that glue. All of that rabbit skin glue needs to come off because A, it's no longer needed, and B, we just learned that it is a problematic material. And I'm going to be removing it by swelling it using a gelled water. Instead of pouring water all over the back, I'm mixing water with a synthetic clay that, when combined, creates a paste or a jelly. And then when that jelly, that water gel, is painted on the back of the canvas, because the rabbit skin glue is hygroscopic and will absorb moisture, all of that moisture causes the rabbit skin glue to swell and become soft. And then I can take a scalpel, in this case one that I've had and used before, so the blade is quite dull. I don't want a really, really sharp scalpel. I'm not looking to cut or slice anything. I just want the shape of the scalpel and kind of the wedge so that I can remove this glue. And you can see, just going back and forth, it allows me to scrape up that glue without damaging the canvas. Even in fast motion, it takes a long time. And generally, I don't do it with a larger tool because the canvas is still a varied surface. There are areas where it dips, there's texture to it, sometimes there are little slubs or knots in the canvas, and using a large tool might compromise the precision that I want to have when I'm scraping. I also generally don't scrape all a painting in one fell swoop because it is tiring, both emotionally, mentally, and physically. Your hand and shoulder and arm do get tired. I usually split it up over the period of a couple of days, but in this case, because I am documenting it, I wanted to show the entire process in one fell swoop. With all of that rabbit skin glue removed, I can start to address some of the structural issues on this painting. And remember, there was a pretty big hole. Now, I'm going to be using a technique called bridging, which is whereby I take strands of Belgian linen that I'm cutting off here, and I will lay them perpendicularly across that tear, hole, or other compromise. First, I dip them in an adhesive, holding them with the tweezers. I'll remove some of that adhesive on the edge of the container. And then, using a dental tool, I will lay them down across this gap, or in this case, hole. And what these are going to do is act like sutures. They're going to hold this piece of canvas in place and provide it with some structural integrity. Now, they are very thin and very small, and you might be thinking, how is that going to hold all of this together? Why not put a patch on the back? Well, I don't put patches on the back of canvases. There's a lot of reasons that we won't do that. Number one, they're excessive, and we like to be as lightweight as possible, to be minimally invasive. Number two, they can telegraph to the front of the painting. Much like when your jeans were patched by your mother or father, they looked good until they went through the wash a couple of times, and then you could see the patch on the That's because, as the jeans go through the wash, they expand and contract with the swelling of the material when they get wet. Canvas does the same thing in humidity changes, but the one area that can't expand and contract is the area that's covered by the patch, and so that becomes rigid and eventually telegraphs to the front. So the bridging technique is one that allows us to add structural support and fidelity to the canvas with a lightweight footprint. Once all of the are in place, a piece of siliconized release film and a piece of felt and a weight go on top, and then they sit for a couple of hours. I come back and I check them. Eventually, I will remove the silicone release film and just leave the felt to draw out any ambient moisture that's in that adhesive, and when I'm done, it looks really good. And that hole or tear is now stable, which allows me to start focusing on cleaning this painting. Now, I made some tests on this painting as I do with every painting before I start work to learn a little bit about what's on the surface, the accumulated grime, any particulate, and the varnish. And in this case, the painting does not have any accumulated surface grime. It was worked on not too long ago, and you can see the varnish layer isn't terribly, terribly dirty, but what we do have is a lot of overpaint. And in this corner, you can see all of that blue coming up and revealing those white areas. Well, that's fill-in medium, and the blue is overpaint. So I need to remove all of that so that I can reveal the artist's true colors. Once I have removed all of this varnish and as much of the overpaint as I think is safe to remove with solvents, I can come back with my scalpel and start removing some of this fill-in medium. And you can see it comes off pretty easily. It swells a little bit with exposure to the solvent, but it's also not that brittle, so when I scrape it off, it comes off pretty easily. Now, in this case, underneath this fill-in medium, the white stuff, you can see some yellow stuff, and that's wax, which was probably done at an earlier point to stabilize the painting. That's going to need to come out too, because wax is not a good medium for stabilization. As I begin to clean this painting, I can start to see just how much overpaint is on it and just how much fill-in is all over the painting. When we fill in a painting, we just want to fill in the areas of missing paint, not on top of the original paint. And in this case, as I remove some of this fill-in, you can see that there's original paint that was simply covered up, probably because it was easier, I guess? But that's not an excuse for bad work. Easy is not an excuse for anything. You do it the right way, or you don't do it at all. And throughout the painting, I have to remove all of these areas of excessive fill-in. And luckily, I can reveal the original paint underneath. It makes me frustrated and upset that this is how people practice conservation, sloppily and doing it with the path of least resistance, because it's easiest for them. Another thing that I have to do that wasn't done during this last conservation is remove all of the varnish. And that's not just on the surface of the paint where it's easy, but that's in all of the nooks and crannies where the impasto is, and that varnish has settled and discolored. So I go with a dental tool and painstakingly scrape all of that old varnish out of all of the texture of the paint. This is something that I really, really dislike doing, partially because I shouldn't have to do this. This should have been done during the last conservation attempt, but so it goes. This painting had a lining previously, and it was probably to address the tears and holes that I bridged, but also because the tacking edge had failed or was compromised. But I'm not going to line this painting. It's not necessary. Unfortunately, the tacking edge has separated and in some cases was completely lost. So I do need to add some structural support so that I can stretch it to the stretcher. And I'm doing what's called an edge lining or a strip lining. And that's a process whereby we add canvas just to the tacking edge so that we have more fidelity. And it begins with an adhesive film strip that is bonded to the painting with an iron. It doesn't take a lot of heat, but once it melts onto the surface of the canvas, I can peel off the release film, and then I can lay the strip lining material down on the canvas and start to prepare it. I've frayed the edge of the Belgian linen strip lining so that A, it has more surface area to bond with the adhesive, giving a better and stronger bond, and also B, because I don't want a crisp line. The frayed edge is a soft line, so it ensures that that edge where the new canvas ends and the old canvas begins doesn't telegraph to the front of the painting. Because of course, I am overlapping into the field of the painting just a little bit by maybe a quarter of an inch so that this tacking edge has even more fidelity. The name of the game here is creating something that's really strong so that all of the weight and tension is transferred away from the original weak canvas to this new canvas. And I'll overlap it in the corners to make sure that the area that's under the highest tension, the corner where the stretcher bar will be keyed out, has a double layer of canvas. This is really important to me. I've seen people cut these joints on a 45 degree miter, but that seems weak to me, and it seems like a place of failure. But by trimming it just to fit and overlapping it, making sure that there are two layers of new Belgian linen right at the corner, I feel that that provides more fidelity and it's not going to tear through or otherwise become weakened. And that's the goal of this procedure, to add as much strength as possible. With the strip lining complete, I can begin the process of tacking the painting to the stretcher. In this case, I decided to reuse the stretcher. It's not original. It was replaced in the past, probably during the last conservation, and it's not a great stretcher, but it is adequate. And the client didn't have the budget for a new stretcher, so we decided to reuse this one. I am a proponent of reusing the original stretcher whenever I can. If it's broken, we can fix it. It's wood. If it's a little undersized, we can build it up. It's wood. But throwing it away is a very drastic step that can't be undone, so I'm not a big fan of it. Now, occasionally, we do have to replace the stretcher because it's just too far gone, or because it's not adequately providing support. And in that case, I like to use the highest quality stretcher that I can get, and I have them custom built for the painting. I don't use anything that's off the shelf. I think that there are better solutions. The stretching process is one that's relatively straightforward and simple. I start by tacking the center of each edge and pulling it taut. That creates a diamond in the center of the painting where there is adequate tension. And then, using my pulling pliers, I'll move from the center out to each one of the corners, pulling with even pressure until I reach the end. Once I've gotten all of the edges tacked, I'll remove these little nails that go through the back, which hold the stretcher square and keep it from distorting while I'm handling it, and I'll trim off the canvas and then start cleaning up the back. I have seen conservators cut off the excess canvas or glue it down. I don't prefer to do that. I think it's unnecessary to cut it or glue it, so I use smaller tacks and I fold it over and just tack it on the back. I have had many debates about whether this provides any actual structural integrity, and I don't really care. I like the way it looks, and this is my studio, and that's important to me. So, take it or leave it. I also like to make sure that those corners are really nicely tucked, and I know it looks really attractive, but it also makes sure that as I key out the stretcher here, those corners don't open up and the canvas doesn't become weakened. Those are the areas that usually fail first, and if I can do something now that prevents that in the future, why not? In addition, I will drill holes in the keys and bind them with a little bit of fishing line and a tack. This is also to prevent problems in the future. If these come loose and they fall between the canvas and the stretcher bar, they could create a dent or a bulge in the painting, and that's nothing that I want. With the painting secure on the stretcher, I can start thinking about filling in the losses that I discovered during the cleaning process when I removed that excessive overpaint. I'm using a putty here, and I'm going to apply it kind of excessively throughout the areas that need the fill-in. And I'm doing this because I want to make sure that I get all those areas and fill them all in, and I will come back and remove this. You folks know that. But filling it in, kind of not worrying about the exact details right now, is not problematic, and it makes the process a little bit more fluid. I'm going to go ahead and try to add some texture with my palette knife so that the fill-in medium isn't smooth, that it kind of resembles the natural paint surface. And as it dries, I'll come back with a silicone spatula, and I'll again just add some more texture. There's not any right or wrong way to do this. You can do it when it's dry with a scalpel or dental tools. You can do it when it's wet. You can press canvas into it, or you can use siliconized molds. Really doesn't matter. But what we're looking for is a surface that better matches the original impasto, the textural buildup of paint. Because even if our color matching is great, if the surface doesn't match, well, you'll see it, and that would be problematic. Once all of this fill-in medium has dried, I can come back with some little swabs and some water and alcohol mixture, and I can start to remove some of this excess fill-in. I want to remove all but what is absolutely necessary. I don't want to do what was done in the past. So I'll make multiple passes, removing a little bit at a time, until I am confident that there is no fill-in on top of the surface of the painting. I can use swabs, dental tools, or a scalpel. Whatever's necessary. And then it's time for retouching. This painting did not have a ton of loss, and one of the nice things about working on a painting that's as busy and impressionist as this is that the retouching is actually really easy, and I kind of look forward to it. I look forward to almost all the retouching, but sometimes it's really difficult and stressful. But in this case, it's actually pretty straightforward and pretty easy. There is a lot of color, there's a lot of texture, so there's a lot of margin of error, so to speak. Your retouching can be a little bit and you can get away with not having to match every color perfectly and precisely, because your eye is going to pass right over this. Kind of just camouflage it in, make it look right, and your eye and brain will process it as normal. So you can see, it's not terribly difficult. It's kind of fun mixing all these colors, laying them down, squinting my eyes a little bit to try to see how the painting looks with this retouching added, to see if it flows. And I'm not looking to try to recreate a nose or a raspberry or part of a hand. I'm just looking to make this area where there was a hole and damage disappear, so that you can see the forest, not the trees. You get it? You see what I did there? Yeah. You guys are smart, I knew. Once all of the retouching is complete, I can move on to varnish. And in this case, I'm just going to brush the varnish on and put a nice thin layer. And I don't want a very thick layer. I don't want it to be goopy. I don't want it to fill in all of those little areas of impasto. I just want to cover the surface with a thin layer of varnish and then leave it be. And this is a synthetic resin layer of varnish. It's stabilized with an ultraviolet inhibitor, so it won't yellow in my lifetime. And it can be easily removed with a solvent that doesn't run risk of damage to the painting. So this is kind of future-proof, and it will make the next conservator's life that much easier. At least, I hope so. Because having gone through what I went through, nobody deserves that. And with all the work done, here is the painting. Actually, it kind of looks like it did before. There wasn't a radical amount of old grime to take off. There weren't massive tears and losses that needed to be stabilized and retouched. The painting was in relatively good condition. But it had a series of problems. Small ones, like the hole, and the tears, and the planar distortions, which all conspired to become distractions. We saw the hole instead of the foreground. In the bright blue sky, we saw the yellow and brown varnish stuck in the texture of the paint. And instead of looking at the beautiful trees running vertically, we saw the waves and the ripples that were horizontally. And all of those things conspired against our ability to see the painting. They become distractions that we focused on. But if we remove them, the tear, the old varnish, and here, the planar distortions, well, now the painting is free of distractions. Free of problems that caught our attention. And we can finally start seeing the forest for the trees.