The Cursed Painting
The Cursed Painting - “Psychedelic Swing”
Sometimes you just know when something is cursed. It could feel like a house is cursed, or a car, maybe a doll or a piece of furniture, or…. a painting.
I started with two pieces of 15”x36” aluminum panels, and created a beautiful surreal, acrylic diptych painting for a big show in Chicago. It was a masterpiece, and was juried in the show successfully and the only thing I had left to do was varnish it. What could go wrong?
I decided to varnish my painting with something I had never used before (mistake #1) called soluvar gloss varnish. Usually I use several coats of the Liquitex high gloss varnish which is water based and can’t be removed, while soluvar can be removed. I was enticed into trying the soluvar for this project because of its self-leveling quality.
Because I want a super high gloss sheen on my metal paintings, I knew after applying the first coat of soluvar that I would need several more coats to achieve that. I waited 12 hours in between coats but as I added more and more coats, I realized it wasn’t self leveling or as glossy as expected and became bumpy. At this point I only have a few days before I have to ship the painting to Chicago.
Thankfully soluvar is removable with mineral spirits, no problem right? Wrong, not only did it take 4 hours to remove from both of my panels, it also took off parts of my painting! At this point one would think that one would use the familiar varnish, but in my mind I thought that maybe I didn’t apply the soluvar in thin enough coats, so (mistake #2) I tried again. The same thing happened.
Four hours later, I had removed the soluvar and touched up the paint again. This time, I thought I would try something I had never tried before on aluminum…resin. Why not? I wanted to achieve a glass-like finish and resin has always worked for me on wood, so I tried it.
The results were spectacular! I now resin a lot of my metal pieces to this day. Everything was falling into place. I had it packed so well that nothing could penetrate this box and shipped it off without a hitch. The show was amazing, my piece was really well placed, and it got a lot of attention.
Fast forward a month when the show was taken down, and I finally received my piece back from Chicago. I unpacked it, and to my dismay the 2 panels had just been thrown into the box with the peanuts, not wrapped with the corner protectors, which were laying under the panels, or protected at all for that matter.
I lifted the pieces out of the box, and was horrified to see that the corners of one of the panels had been smashed, and the resin cracked. Unfortunately, I didn’t have insurance on the piece I was shipping (mistake #3). Luckily I was compensated a small amount of the retail price by the gallery, and
I was able to fix the painting.
The lessons I learned are the following:
1. Don’t experiment with unfamiliar varnishes on anything but a sample painting.
2. Don’t repeat the same dumb thing you just did that didn’t work out yesterday on that masterpiece.
3. Have insurance on your artwork so that you’re compensated for anything that might happen to your work while in transit or storage.
4. Determination goes a long way, and happy accidents come from experimentation.
The Cursed Painting, “Psychedelic Swing” [15”x72” acrylic on aluminum panels with resin] is currently for sale and as beautiful as ever!