Artist made mistake Prevention Zinc oil What to doApproveRejectUn-ApproveSubscribeUn-Unsubscribe
Question asked 2022-12-20 08:41:30 ...
Most recent comment 2022-12-21 16:38:30
Oil Paint
Hello,
I am a professional artist and I used zinc white in my last paintings. It had been years I haven't used it and I totally forgot about the zinc white problematic. They really should label tubes. It was Winton of Windsor and Newton. Feeling really scared and stupid. I used it in mixing with paint to have more transparent colors. In some parts it was more than 15%. It's linen stretched on aluminum bars with a Liquitex translucent gesso (worst case scenario I know). The paintings are finished and going for a show soon. I'm freaking out.
As an artist, I was wondering if there is anything I can do to help prevent the zinc white parts to crack? I know it's not good to oil out at the end, but could oiling out the precise area where zinc white was used could help in this particular case to add some flexibility? Perhaps with walnut oil so it yellows a little less? I would prefer yellowing over cracking and flaking. Or would varnishing help in any way to protect the surface from stress? Or what else should an artist do if they mistakenly used it? Thank you so much for your help!!!
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Moderator Answer
(brian baade)
First, do not panic, there are probably millions of paintings
out there that contain zinc white.
Do not oil out. That will provide no additional flexibility
and will only cause eventual darkening and disfigurement.
The best thing that you can do is to make sure that the
artwork is stored in a place with a stable environment, especially, stable
humidity.
A conservator cannot make the paint less brittle nor slow
down embrittlement. Facing would not do this either. They could possibly make
the painting less flexible in terms of the support which would help prevent
cracking. Even adding a backing board to the painting would diminish movement
of the support. This is certainly something that you could do.
In the future, if you continue to use zinc white containing
paints, perhaps work on rigid supports or stretch your canvas over a rigid
panel. This would provide some protection.
Again, don’t freak out.
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