Damar Varnish and Paint Thinners

[Marvin Mattelson]

It is my feeling that Damar Varnish is an inauspicious ingredient when incorporated into a painting medium. Historically, I

[Michael Georges]

Hello Marvin:

Well, I see what you are saying is from your point of view, however, the addition of Damar Varnish into a painting medium is, by my point of view, just fine.

I ascribe to a more traditional method of painting and my medium contains both Damar and Venice Turpentine. These ingredients, when mixed with Stand Oil and Rectified Turpentine, make a medium which suits my process perfectly. As the medium contains Damar, I too was concerned about putting a final varnish of damar over the painting as there might be an overzealous conservator some day who could clean right through to my undertones. This I have found, however, is not really of too much concern and I have mitigated the risk. Here is how:

First, the experiment: I painted napthol red light on a panel using my medium. I let it dry for 6 months. Then, I divided the panel in half and varnished one half with Damar (the natural final varnish), the other with Gamvar (the synthetic final varnish). I am seven months on from that event and at 6 months, I did a test on a small portion of each side. Using Rectified Turpentine, a somewhat harsh solvent by cleaning standards, I removed the varnish easily enough on both sides without pulling up any red. Further, I had to scrub quite firmly in order to get any red at all to come off. This tells me that the Stand Oil and Venice Turp in my medium are doing their job strengthening the paint film. No conservator is ever going to rub that hard - I sleep well at night now.

Second - I don't varnish with Damar: As the Damar ages, it will get harder to remove and yellow slightly. For this reason, and the fact that I don't want any possibility of cross-linking with my paint film, I varnish with Gamvar instead of Damar - it is easier to remove, and shouldn't yellow like Damar.

I believe that if you understand your materials, and prove your understanding by doing your own experiments, you can make paintings that will indeed last for 300+ years.

Toxicity: There is indeed toxicity to oil painting materials. For me, I understand the materials enough to use them safely. Others may make a differing choice. If you replace the air in your studio with turpentine fumes, it will indeed harm you. But opening a window and keeping your turps covered when not in use will protect you from any harmful effects. I use a HEPA filter in my studio and leave a window constantly cracked if not full open. There is more danger from neighbor's cigarette smoke wafting in than from the air in the room.

BTW: Love your work. Wonderful mastery of form.

[Marvin Mattelson]

Coming back at you Michael,

I

[Michael Georges]

Hello Again Marvin:

What we agree on:

I definitely agree with you that the medium does not make the painter. I have said that a skilled painter could take peanut butter and honey and make a medium that would sing and be a tasty treat too! For my process right now, my medium works for me.

I also definitely agree with you that one does need to be careful of the materials one uses. Just because I don't find turpentine harmful to me, does not mean that it won't harm anyone - people with chemical sensitivity or breathing problems might well be adversely affected by it.

Where I diverge:

However, I don't believe that it is reason enough to warn everyone away from using these materials.

Just as we have to experiment with our materials, so we have to make decisions based on that experience - but truth to one is not necessarily truth to all.

There are those whose truth says that mineral spirits as a thinner does not work with oil paints the same way that turpentine does - it creates a weaker paint film via its evaporation. That alkyd mediums can flake and delaminate and that they may not stand the test of time. That hand mulling your own paints is the only way to go. Linseed oil should be used and it should not. Black Oil is great and horrible. Lead paint is wonderful and deadly.

The amount of individual truths out there is dizzying.

I think we all need to make these choices for ourselves. That does not mean that your warning about these products is unwarranted, especially if it causes someone to test things for themselves and make their own informed decisions. But oil painting is 600 years old and it has been done for the last 550 years with traditional materials - I believe that artists should research and think for themselves before abandoning them.

That said, I use alkyd medium in my undertones. I have Gamblin's Permanant Alizarin, and I paint on acrylic gesso boards. I rejected Gamblin's Flake White Replacement and Gamsol. I do these things because I have researched them and believe that the benefits they provide work well into my process.

But thanks for the warning.

[Tom Martinez]

I was going to let this go by. But, somehow I'm drawn to make a statement. I agee with Michael... God loves you and so do I, Marvin. But, I can't agree with you. I have used turpentine all of my life. I've washed my hands and tools in it. Toxic!?! No. Some people are allergic to turpentine and have violent reactions to it. But, poisonous. Who drinks it? Who bathes in it? Who snorts it? As long as we don't eat and smoke in an enclosed area where turpentine is present and as long as we wash after its use and handle it with respect, I see no harm in its use. To run around yelling "the sky is falling", is not helping our society. There is harmfulness in everything that we touch, breath and ingest. To ignor their presence and use would cause us all to starve and die. Know your tools. Test and experiment on your own to get that knowledge. Don't ignor what you read and hear. But, also, don't accept everything that is claimed as the truth. I suggest that you adapt the Missouri principle of "Show me."

[Michael Georges]

Also what makes you think that future conservators will treat your artwork cautiously when they overzealously removed the uppermost paint layer of the Sistine Chapel. The catalogue of the Eakins retrospective at the Philadelphia Museum of Art illustrates how the top layer of one of his paintings was likewise removed.

Marvin:

Yea, I have thought of that too. I agree with you that conservators have indeed cleaned too deeply on the Sistine ceiling. They removed the unifying glaze that ties the whole thing together as a single piece of art.

I have seen examples of paintings where they cleaned and "lo-and-behold" discoved that the background was not brown after all, but gray-green -- DOH! Right through to the verdaccio undertones!

I mitigate that as much as I can by writing my medium formula down on the back of the painting so they will know what they are working with. That, of course, assumes that someone will value my work enough to someday have it cleaned and restored - I can hope - as can we all.

And I really did have to scrub vigorously to get into the paint layer. Ultimately, there is no iron clad protection from a conservator who does not know what they are doing. I hope my work gets a conservator who is not only a good conservator, but a good artist as well. The major failing I think the art conservation field has is too many chemists and not enough artists. They understand "what" but not "why" and "how". It's that lack of understanding of "why" and "how" that leads to overcleaning.

[Marvin Mattelson]

Dear Tom, Michael, et al.

My point was not to tell anyone what to do but merely to provoke some thought on a (chemically?) sensitive matter. Obviously people should be able to weigh their own options. It would be foolish to blindly follow the advice of others without researching the subject fully.

That said, the long term effects of exposure to toxins is oft times cumulative and symptoms may not arise for years. Washing hands in turpentine? God bless you Tom! Every one knows of Aunt So and So who drank a bottle of gin and smoked a carton of cigarettes every day and lived to be a hundred. Personally, I

[Michael Georges]

Marvin:

It has been a good discussion even if we cannot agree on everything.

As to who used what, when and how. Our understanding of materials and processes of Ye Olden Times is so fragmented as to be almost completely useless. Some say they did use varnish, some say they may have, others say they didn't. Certainly chemical analysis does not detect much of it - though they are only sampling a very minute amount of the surface areas. Don;t even get me started about black oil!

Either way, it's nice to have a discussion about it. You are clearly a very skilled painter and you have a process that works great for you - it shows believe me. Your points are well taken - certainly we must be informed and take proper precautions.

As Virgil says, check back with me in 100 years - likely I will have changed my mind on some of these positions I take today.

[Marvin Mattelson]

Michael,

I

[Virgil Elliott]

Marvin, Michael,

According to a lot of testing done on paint chips that had become detached from many old paintings, the preponderance of Old Master paintings from the 16th and 17th centuries seem to have been painted without soft resins like damar or mastic, at least, as these resins are easily detected by the methods used, if they are there, and none were found. What was found in most cases was linseed oil or walnut oil, and pigment. The introduction of soft resins, wax, and various megilp concoctions to oil paintings appears not to have become widespread until the middle of the 18th century, and lasted until the mid-19th century, when the problems attributed to those ingredients began to show up often enough to suggest a cause-and-effect relationship between them. Unfortunately for posterity, Sir Charles Lock Eastlake published his book in 1847, and it has influenced many painters in modern times to adopt the practices that were current in the first half of the 19th century, which have since proved problematic. Jacques Maroger subsequently clouded the waters even more with his equally fallacious assumptions published in his 1948 book, which led more people to believe the Old Masters used these 18th century mediums, along with his contentions that one could not possibly paint like the Old Masters without using those mediums. They were barking up the wrong tree.

If resins were commonly used in Old Master paintings done in the 16th and 17th centuries, they have as yet gone undetected. There remains a theoretical possibility that hard resins cooked in oil might have escaped detection due to the molecular changes brought about by incorporating these resins with oil at high temperatures, and/or by changes wrought by great aging, but this would only leave the relatively minor portions where the oil was described as "heat-bodied" as possibilities where hard resins might be present. The use of heat-bodied oil seems to have been for certain special effects only, rather than general, with most of the samples tested showing uncooked oils only. Of course, science never rests, and now there are even better methods of detecting resins in old paint, so stay tuned, new information could come out at any time to cause us to rethink everything.

I hope that helps shed a little light on the subject.

Marvin, congratulations on your award at ASOPA. You certainly deserved a good award in that show. I enjoyed meeting you there.

Virgil