A major factor influencing Brushed with Light‘s design was due to the delicate nature of watercolors themselves. Because the works are light sensitive it is required that they be exhibited in low light. This being said, a dim room is not always the most comfortable environment to view works of art.

As a solution, I designed the inner walls of the room to be recessed at the top so I could install lighting fixtures, which were then colored with gels and diffused to give the room an inviting glow, without subjecting the paintings to additional light. I repeated this technique in the gallery entrance so the visitor is reminded before even entering the space the important role light plays within these beautiful paintings. In addition the walls were painted with a deep berry palette which functions to make the paintings “pop”, due to the fact that light is reflected off the pictures while being absorbed by the wall around them, highlighting the pictures rather than the room.

In my previous post, I discussed how an adhesive introduced with an ultrasonic mister can be used to stabilize paint layers. Now you can see that close up as illustrated here of another watercolor in the exhibition, Quarry by William Thon, ca. 1952 (pictured above). Much of our work is done under a microscope which magnifies the area we are working on enabling us to be more precise and to see things not visible under normal conditions. As we work on a piece we can take photographs through the microscope known as photomicrographs which are included below. In this watercolor the artist used a range of techniques to apply his paint including a brush and a sponge, and by pouring and dripping paint onto the surface, wet on top of wet layers. Unfortunately, some of these layers are not well adhered to each other.

In the photomicrograph above you can see the top layer of brittle black paint which is lifting away from the underlying powdery yellow paint. We used the ultrasonic mister to treat this watercolor which worked very well for consolidation of the powdery yellow paint, where it would have been otherwise difficult and time-consuming to introduce an adhesive with a brush. For some of the larger paint flakes it was necessary to use the more traditional technique of inserting the gelatin adhesive to specific areas with a minute brush under magnification. See the after treatment photomicrograph below where the black paint has been set down and is no longer lifting away from the yellow layer below.

In this photograph, I am consolidating lifting and powdery paint on the watercolor, The Samuel Fleet Homestead by Frances Flora Palmer, from the 1850s. The watercolor depicts a house which once stood at the corner of Fulton and Gold streets in Brooklyn and was reproduced in an 1884 publication, History of Kings County and Brooklyn by Stiles.

The piece was previously attached to a stretcher and in the image above you can see it was darkened in the central area where it was once exposed to light. It had been treated extensively in the past, but recent examination under magnification revealed areas of lifting paint where the artist used additional gum binder to enrich shadows in the trees and foreground, and to add dimension to the horses and some of the figures.

To consolidate, or re-adhere the loose pigment particles and flakes, I applied an adhesive using this ultrasonic mister. Most of the time consolidation is done with an adhesive introduced with a very small brush under the microscope under one paint flake at a time. The advantage of the mister is that the adhesive—in this case a photo-grade gelatin in ethanol and deionized water—is formed into minute particles which are smaller than the pigment particles. Because of their size they are easily absorbed into the pigment without changing the appearance of the paint layer and can be applied to a larger area at one time. This is an incredibly successful and useful technique for stabilizing powdery paint and small, light paint flakes as with this watercolor. In this case I am carrying out the treatment on a suction table which creates a downward pull to further enhance the absorption of the consolidant into the paper.

In my next post, we’ll go under the microscope to see the before and after effects of consolidation with an ultrasonic mister on another watercolor in the exhibition.