Stretching Belief Part 3

Well, thanks for coming in again, Brad. I know we've been talking about this for a long time, so I think let's just get right to it. So without further ado, here is your painting. Oh, wow. That looks really nice. I'm kind of shocked. The color is great, actually. This is the original here? This is the original sky color? This is the artist's work, yeah. Wow. I mean, that is actually, I would say, I mean, better than what it was before. I'm actually completely shocked. And this is a hundred times better. A hundred times better. Wow. Tell me what, I mean, what did you end up having to do here? Well, I had to do a little bit of everything. I mean, I kind of knew that this piece was going to take a lot of work and was going to be a challenge, but obviously you remember the whole thing was overpainted. Wait, it really is beautiful. I'm shocked. The entire sky, the entire foreground, and of course all of that had to come off. I discovered that there was old surface grime that was still on the painting that they never were able to remove. In fact, I think what ended up happening was in a failed attempt to remove that surface grime, they got really aggressive and just really scrubbed the painting. And that is what caused that skinning and a lot of removal of the paint. And that's probably why they overpainted the whole thing. They just kind of were out of their depths, made some mistakes and thought this is the easiest way to correct it. And then of course I had to get the painting off of the old lining. And you remember when I told you it was, I thought it was going to be rabbit skin glue? Right, yeah. Well, it wasn't. It was some sort of industrial tile adhesive. It's not another animal? No, it's a whole other animal. Yeah. I'll tell you. Okay. So that was, oh my gosh. I mean, removing that glue was just an exercise in frustration. It was really, really difficult. And then dealing with the tear and closing up the gap that was present when they tried to fix it. You remember the fill-in had popped off and filling out. Oh yeah, of course. Instead of just filling it in again, I wanted to close those canvases up to reduce the amount of fill-in that I needed. And that was a whole nother process. I had to design and build a tool to execute that. You had to design and build a tool. I did. Yeah. I had to design and- To do this? To do this patch? Yeah. And to fabricate a method of taking the two canvases and closing them up and stretching them. Okay. And so that was, that was fun. I enjoyed that part. It was a lot of work. As long as I don't have to pay for it. No, you did not have to pay for it. And you don't get to keep it. It's my tool. It stays here. Then I was faced with the retouching and how to integrate the painting and make it look like it should. There were thousands of little dots that I had to retouch. This was not as simple as just retouching the big tear. There were areas of canvas showing that needed to be touched up. And unlike the previous work, I couldn't just take a big brush and just kind of cover it up. What percentage of this area and this area, when you stripped it, is still original? And what percentages touch up compared to what it was before? Before it was just completely painted. So what is it? Like, I mean, I have no idea. When you brought the painting in, I would say the amount of painting that was original was probably 10 to 15%. 85% of it was overpainted. Something like that. Now I would say that you've probably got maybe two or three, maybe 5% retouching. That's it? That's it. Yeah. Wow. And that's the difference between good retouching and bad retouching. The whole point of retouching is to be as conservative as possible, to limit the amount that you add to the painting wherever possible. Well, I might have another one for you to look at in the future that's a little larger, just so you know. Just so you know. But can you, is there any way, can you show me the tool that you used to do this? Yeah, absolutely. I'd love to. Okay. What am I looking at? This is very strange. What is this? Yeah, so this is what conservators call trekkers from the German tractor to pull. These are devices that we build to pull canvas, to stretch them. And so this part gets attached to the canvas, the canvas gets moistened, and then I can tighten, I can add tension by twisting these little rods. You can see it starts to pull this Kevlar string. And when I add tension across all of these, the canvas to which this is adhered will be pulled. You didn't even have these before? I did not have these before. Wow. You have to thank me then, don't you? I mean, wow. You know, to be honest, this is crazy. I have stretched canvas before, using much more rudimentary kind of home-built tools. Yeah. But building these was something that I had wanted to do for years. But without a project, it seems silly. And so when your painting came along, and I discovered that there was this big gap, and I realized that this may be the perfect opportunity for me to build these tools. And then now I have them, and I can use them for other paintings, or they can just collect dust. Good. But I don't get charged for you creating this tool, do I? No. I mean, right, do I bill you? I mean, wow. Yeah, right, I should thank you. No, these are mine. I foot the bill for building all of my tools. This is amazing. This is amazing. And super creative, too. One of the things I do whenever I build a new tool, I guess it's like christening a boat. I like to give it a name. So, because these tools were built for your painting, I thought, maybe I'd let you name it. Wow. I mean, that's a big responsibility. It's a heavy burden. I know. I don't know. I mean, can you give me some suggestions? Do we have a, you know, an ABC that, I mean, you're the one working with it. Maybe I'll ask my Patreon folks to come up with the shortlist. Please do. And then I will let you choose from that. Great. I like that idea, because I don't think I should have that burden. You don't want the heavy responsibility of naming an esoteric conservation tool? Yes, exactly. But I'm happy that I was able to bring this to you. Okay. Yeah. Big question for me here. I know nothing about this artist at all. We don't even, we know nothing about it. Did you learn anything, or did you have time to do that? Yeah, we did. Actually, thanks to Jack, my videographer, he was able to shake some trees and find out a little bit about the artist. Zachary Chandler Sanderson was a University of Michigan alum, and he was a literary studies major. He ended up working for the Indiana Department of Conservation, fittingly enough, doing wildlife and prairie restoration. And he worked for their magazine, writing articles about what the department was doing, about the natural landscape, about the Indiana dunes. And obviously, he was a talented artist. He contributed illustrations to the magazine. There was one other auction record I found of his, a landscape painting, a really beautiful one. But I don't think that art was ever a career for him. Maybe it was just something that he pursued because it gave him some inner satisfaction or added value to his life. And it's kind of a bummer because this is a really compelling painting. I think it's a really strong composition. It's really beautifully executed, and the other painting is as well. So, you know. Not exactly Indiana, what I think of as an Indiana landscape. No. Which is sort of odd. He actually was out in California and Nevada, working with, I think, the Air Force or the Coast Guard, doing some studies. And I think that's probably where he painted this or maybe got the inspiration to paint this painting. Wow. To get this returned to this state is just very exciting. And I don't even mean the patch. I meant the whole painting. Well, I think it's a beautiful painting. And it was, at times, frustrating, surprising. But ultimately, I mean, it's always fun to take something that is in desperate need of attention and to find a way to bring a new life to it, to make sure that it, you know, it can look as good as possible, that you can enjoy it, that your kids can enjoy it. I mean, that's kind of really what it's all about. Yeah, it has a very prominent place in our home. So right now, there's just a frame sitting on an empty wall. So it will be very nice to have it back as a highlighted painting. So this is wonderful. Then let's get it wrapped up and get it home. Great. Thank you. It's my pleasure, Brad.