The above painting called “Blind Girl” ( there’s a story behind that name) has been posted before but this time with a different purpose.
Recently it was on display at a local gallery and when it’s display time was up I had to go fetch it. When I got home I then noticed the DAMAGE!
Gallery’s have waivers that all artists sign which is a contractual agreement between the artist and the gallery regarding insurance, damages, etc. In this case the gallery having done all in it’s power is not responsible for any work that incurs damage during it’s stay.
Was I Upset?
Yes and No.
I signed the waiver so I took the chance. However obviously I was a little disturbed about it. I was thankful that it wasn’t one of my more expensive pieces that had been on display….this time. Here’s how it looked after i got home.
The green arrows point, of course, to the resulting damage. I won’t say which gallery it was hung at but I will say, that to me, it looks like the impact of a runaway gurney. The paintings to be hung are on the floor and leaned against the walls during their changeover, etc.
You can see that the canvas on her cheek is wrinkled and there is about a half inch indentation near the frame and almost a tear right next to it.
How can you mend a broken art?
Disclaimer: A professional painting restorer I am not. Although I do have years of experience with numerous kinds of paint.
Step 1. It seemed the best thing to do was start with a stretched or tightened canvas. This was an inexpensive gallery wrapped frame ( and my low price for the painting was reflective of that). First the painting is flipped over revealing the back side. here you can see at the corners of the frame that two wedge shaped or more like rhomboid pieces of wood (canvas wedges) are tapped in to spread the corner of the painting apart slightly and resulting in a tighter canvas.
These are unusually large wedges that I had to make because the slots in the back were unusually large.
The second thing that was done to tighten the canvas was with the use of fine water mist sprayed on to the back of the canvas in the general area of the damage. Soaking the canvas is NOT a good idea. I didn’t want the surface coat of paint to become so saturated with water that it might peel off.
A Hair dryer was then used to dry the back of the canvas quickly. With the really cheap non-cotton or vinyl canvas this trick will not work.
Step 2.
A small round brush was used to paint over tear mark.
Step 3
When the touch up paint was dry I gave it a final coat of satin finish. You can see the results below.
To be honest, at a certain angle, you can see some discolouration but for the most part the indentation is gone and things didn’t turn out too badly. Hope this info helps. Any questions or comments, just leave below. O one more, thing. In this case the canvas wedges were quite heavy and I may need to attach a little weight to the other side so the painting hangs more balanced on the wall.
Thanks for reading. If you’d like to purchase this painting or a hand painted duplicate then private message me. Here’s the final:
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A Brush with Life! 
An interesting and informative read Kevin…corrected by a touch of the Master’s Hand I would say…
Oh dear! Glad you were able to fix the canvas so expertly. It would have been a shame to loose this piece!
Thank you…I had it where most of the pieces were ‘tourist’ art so it likely wasn’t appreciated that much, lol . I’m glad you see it’s pop art ‘quality’. I enjoy Pop Art as well as fine art. They both have their place I think.