Over the past 20+ years I’ve easily seen and worked on at least 15,000 paintings. And while I can always find something compelling about any artwork, there’s one type that constantly captures me; portraiture. Perhaps seeing ourselves in paint, wondering about the story of the sitter, or imagining their lives speaks to a uniquely human experience. This lovely portrait did not disappoint. Head over to YouTube to watch her come back to life.

Part two of my least liked and most controversial video is up on YouTube. In this video I finish up the conservation and restoration of a painting damaged by hurricane Ian. There’s a pretty radical transformation that’s well worth it. Who knew that in 2023 talking about our climate and the ways it’s changing and how that affects artwork was still so polarizing 🤷‍♂️

Part 1 of 2 of my most recent project is now up on YouTube. This was a fun project, if one that was a bit daunting upon first sight. Some neat history and pretty cool irony on this project too.

Never. Gets. Old. Removing discolored varnish is easily one of the most rewarding parts of this work. This one probably won’t be a full video but likely end up on IG eventually.

This is why your paintings will all have random smudges on them and be two weeks late 🐶

So… Kitt got a puppy named Poppy. And of course, being a puppy she can’t be left alone so she’s hanging out with us here at the studio for a while. Public service notice to all my clients; all your paintings are going to be late on completion. Sorry, not sorry.

One of the fun things that we get to do every now and again is a suite of scientific analysis and testing. In this case we have a painting with provenance indication the artist is Goya. The owner has requested radiocarbon dating of the wood panel, HRMS and Raman spectrometry of several paint samples. We don’t have those machines in house so we partner with a forensic laboratory to conduct the analysis and with that data we will write the report. These tests can be enlightening and help us understand more about the object, how it was made and when, all hopefully helping buttress the provenance and establish the work as a Goya. Of course the final call will fall on the suite of researchers and art historians; we’re merely the detectives gathering the evidence. Fun nonetheless.

Ok, we all know that reversible/removable varnishes are what should be applied to paintings so that in the future they can be removed without damaging the underlying paint layer. Unfortunately that’s not always the case as artists and well intentioned but uninformed individuals sometimes choose materials that are unsuitable for surface coatings like linseed oil or polyurethanes. Sometimes these can be removed manually via scraping and chipping or chemically with solvents. But these approaches only work when the paint layer can sustain these treatments; an unstable paint layer cannot be scraped and a fugitive (or solvent-vulnerable) paint layer can’t sustain exposure to solvents and in these cases it’s kind of a stalemate; to remove the surface coating would harm the painting but leaving the coating harms the painting as well. While not always applicable, and certainly not easy, fast or cheap there are other solutions. One would be enzymes that can digest the surface coating without harming the paint layer and they exist but man oh man, some of them are hundreds of dollars a gram, have very particular operating parameters and are not a panacea. Another approach is… lasers. And that’s what we’re experimenting with in the studio right now. The first photo shows the results of two different solvent tests to remove the polyurethane coating on an abandoned organ donor painting. Clearly while the poly is partially removed, some of the paint is as well and that unacceptable. The video shows the unsuccessful attempt to remove the coating with pure acetone, then the use of the laser followed immediately with acetone again. You can clearly see the poly being removed without any damage to the paint layer. The final photo shows the results of two different laser attempts. Clearly there is still some residue that needs to be removed but it is without a doubt a massive success. More testing to come for sure as we learn more about how best to use the laser but I’m as excited as I’ve been in a long time. Plus… LASERS 🤙

This one is a bit hard to see unless you zoom in (zoom in!) the painting was in a fire and as a result of heat exposure the surface blistered and all those little blisters were lost or removed in a previous conservation attempt. The entirety of the sky and water were then glazed in and over painted. We removed the old work and embarked on a pretty mind numbing course of retouching: thousands of little dots applied atop the losses to reintegrate the image. Eventually the work was complete and the piece came together. The third photo shows the extent of the retouching. I’m ready for the weekend 🤪

Something very exciting is happening at BFAR.

Straight from the flax fields of Belgium, the finest linen on the planet thanks to @libecobelgianlinen this should last me for a few weeks… 😜

BFAR crate disposal unit. We tried to donate and give these darn things away for months to no avail. So…