White Paint

Today, an art editor came to my studio. He helped me go through 54 half-baked paintings that needed a ruthless eye. We saved sixteen that showed promise; most of which were recent work and a few that were from the first years I started painting. Fourteen paintings on panels ranging from untempered Masonite to Gessobord were deemed better in white than the picture I had labored over under some pretense that I would re-work them at a later date.

Five of those were acrylic paintings that I gave up about four years ago. I found some joy in sanding down the surface and pulling out a huge bucket of acrylic gesso. I covered each one carefully with two coats of the fresh white surface and sanded them in between. I felt air and space entering my mind as I applying the satisfyingly white surface.

The other nine were all oils and from what I've learned, one is welcome to paint in oils over acrylic paint, but woe to the artist who covers oils with acrylic. I needed something else to cover these rather dense paintings. I found three tubes of white paint in the bottom of my old artist's box: Holbein Neo-Zinc White, Holbein Cermaic White and Gamblin Fast Matte White Alkyd. It was a perfect opportunity to try each one to see how each behaved.

I have always worked with Titanium White in all my paintings so this sampling of whites were obviously demonstration paints I had picked up somewhere. I started with the Neo-Zinc. It was recalcitrant about spreading over the first surface I tried. As I researched it, I found that Zinc white has a nasty reputation for encouraging oils to peel off. According ton one article from "Natural Pigments," Paint layers containing zinc white "delaminate." And it could take four days to dry. I read this after I had covered three panels with the stuff. A mistake, perhaps, though I've finished the tube, at least. No more Zinc White in my paint box.

Then I tried the Ceramic White. It covered much better than the Zinc. The chemical name is "Strontium Titanate" which just sounds like a superhero in comparison to "Zinc Oxide" which is something I'd put on my nose in the Gobi Desert. I covered another three panels with this stuff, noting that it was covering much better than the Zinc-White.

The Gamblin Fast Matte Alkyd Titanium White covered more solidly than the other and is listed as an opaque paint. It had the matte quality of the gesso on the first panels and a brightness that exceeded the other two whites. And it looks like they may be dry within 18-24 hours.

While some artists fear the white canvas, today's exercise made me appreciate what it is to literally create a clean slate in one's own studio. Oil paint is a joy and a jealous lover. It is a medium that takes over one's life. There is nothing so useful as repainting old paintings to get a fresh perspective on one's work.

And if you're doing the math, you'll note that there are still 24 paintings in question. Those are paintings on canvas and linen that need to be unstretched and rolled for residence in the back of a closet for a while. Stretcher bars take up less room stacked in the corner with nothing on them, waiting for a new fresh bit of cloth that can be gessoed into a fresh, clean surface.

Let the ideas begin. The surfaces are becoming ready.