WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.000 This is Dabalon. 00:00:05.680 --> 00:00:10.960 My name is Trent Reynolds and in this podcast I have conversations with artists about materials. 00:00:14.800 --> 00:02:11.900 If you are enjoying this podcast and want it to continue, please subscribe or make a one-time contribution at dabalon.com/podcast Leave a five-star rating on iTunes and tell all your friends. The longevity of this program very much depends on your support, and I thank you. There are many companies that produce art materials that I use and love, but there is one company that I have grown a special respect and appreciation for over the years. This company is Gamblin. Gamblin specializes primarily in artists oil colors and other materials related to oil painting. They have an odorless solvent called Gamsol, for example, and a line of Alkyd painting mediums. What sets them apart from me though is the effort they make to connect with and educate the artists who use their materials. And when I say they, I should say he, Robert Gamblin, because he is often personally in the educational content created by the company he founded. It's part of the character of the company he built. And it's all really great stuff. The products and the instruction. So somehow, the universe decided to drop me a totally unexpected gift. And through a friend, I connected with Robert, and he agreed to record a conversation with me for this podcast. It was no surprise that I really enjoyed talking with him. Enough with my intro. Here is my conversation with artist and founder of Gamblin' Artist Colors, Robert Gamblin'. Before I indulge in asking you a bunch of questions about art materials, independent of your work, I am more interested to start off by talking about Robert Gamblin, the artist, and where you're at right now and what kind of art you're making and what you're using. 00:02:12.320 --> 00:05:48.680 Oh, well, thank you for asking. I'm in a new phase of my artistic practice. and I'm very, very happy to be here. For my work over 40 years, there was a tremendous amount of travel involved and my work took me to really wonderful cities and I've been a landscape painter for much longer than I've been and a paint maker. And so going to all these incredible places, I wanted to spend more time in them. And so a way of doing that was to do drawings and do photographs and bring that work back to the studio and just spend more time in Venice, making paintings of Venice or more time in Northern New Mexico, by making paintings there. So I've got like 30 paintings of Venice with no market for them. Just because I just enjoyed emotionally being there. But in the last year and a half, My wife and I bought a house and studio on the Oregon coast. And we're in the middle of what's called the Cascade Head Biosphere Reserve. And it's a UNESCO designated special place on the Oregon coast. And so there's very little private property that's in this biosphere reserve. But the property predates the existence of the biosphere, of the designated biosphere reserve. And so there is this private property that remains here. So we're very fortunate to live in the middle of it. And it is right on the ocean. on a headland that's basalt that sticks out into the ocean. And surrounding that headland is a Sitka spruce forest. And so we live here on the edge of the cliff over the ocean in the middle of a Sitka spruce forest. And so for the first time in my career as a landscape painter, I'm at... I've been able to live in the middle of my subject matter. I mean my muse is right outside my door and so it's just really wonderful to To to sort of dig in and and I've been I've been painting here for over 25 years But only living here from the last year and a half and really having the opportunity to get to know a place really deeply. In the past, I feel like I painted like a tourist where I'm moving through town, I'm capturing some images, and I'm going away. And I don't say tourist in a pejorative way, but being a tourist is like seeing things for the first time and seeing things with more sort of childlike eyes. And so I've really enjoyed working that way and and enjoy those paintings that were made. But living here and being able to walk out into my subject matter, allows me to go much deeper into the place and search for layers of meaning and sort of watch myself evolve over a long period of time. as an artist engaging with my subject matter. So it's really terrific to be here. And I feel we've just sort of gotten here. A year and a half is a short period of time. 00:05:49.580 --> 00:06:29.900 Well, that's such an interesting twist on what we're doing as artists, what we're doing as painters in my mind, because I think so often we think of artists art as capturing some kind of destination that other people can't get to, right? That's somehow unusual or remarkable. But you're talking about, yes, where you're at perhaps is remarkable and not a place that everybody can go and experience, and you're providing that for us, but, You're also talking about something different about not just having going at somewhere special and getting the snapshot, you know, of the perfect moment and bringing it back for everybody to experience. But you're talking about documenting a relationship with the landscape, right? 00:06:31.480 --> 00:08:24.860 Exactly, because to my work, the place. once the painting is done, the place is not that important. And it shouldn't be because it's not to be a record of an actual place, but it's to be a record of an experience. And I think taking it from that approach, then the work has the ability or ability, at least the hope of being able to engage people from their own experience because, you know, we've all had walks in a, in a, in a beautiful forest. And so, um, it's not important that my work is about this forest, but it is about being in a forest or how the light, um, is in, is in the forest with light bends around a tree. Um, So, yeah, I hope to search and paint about more general experiences rather than the specific, but being here allows me to, you know, really sort of go deeper into that approach. I don't paint as a, you know, as a realist painter or as an impressionist. An important mentor of mine was Wolf Kahn, who was a second generation abstract expressionist, but he became a landscape painter and he brought abstract expressionist concerns to landscape painter. And so Wolf was an important mentor of mine and sort of, I feel, helped me to get into an expressionist mode through giving me the gift of seeing the world differently. a little bit the way that he sees the world, which is extremely valuable. 00:08:25.880 --> 00:08:51.600 Yeah, I saw some of your paintings on Instagram before I knew of your connection to WolfCon, and the way that you're using color is obviously far beyond just documenting what you're seeing. There's more of an emotional interpretation of your experience, right? Yes. And once I made that connection, or I read that you had worked with WolfCon, it made all the sense in the world. His work is very much the same way. 00:08:52.240 --> 00:08:58.160 Yeah, I feel that the color is really the major voice telling the story. For sure. 00:08:59.160 --> 00:10:21.780 If you're okay with it, can I read a couple paragraphs from your website? Yeah, certainly. What you're saying reminded me of something I read there that I thought was so well- so well put that I'd like to share it. It says, and this is just at robertgamblinstudio.com for slash about, and you say, for many years I thought that my job as a painter was to discover just why light falling on the land in a certain way was unique from all the other moments that are ordinary. Okay. Now I know there is no knowing why, there is just an opportunity to honor our world, and that these special moments are gifts. Making paintings is my way of living longer in those moments, and when the painting is completed, my hope is that they will do the same for others as they are doing for me, allowing one to relive these moments and remind us that this life, this world, is precious. And it seems to me like in addition to that, which what I've just been hearing you say is that the intent is not just this to represent or communicate this singular moment, but to connect it to other people's experiences that bring the same feeling or the same kind of understanding and respect for the world. 00:10:22.200 --> 00:11:30.100 Oh yes, absolutely. That's one of the reasons why I really hate naming or titling a work after a specific place because I feel that if I do that, and I've done that many times and I will do it again, I'm sure, but I feel that it tends to limit it. I do a painting, the bend on the Salmon River. And so all of a sudden that sort of limits where it is, rather than being a painting about a bend in a river of any river. And because I want the paintings to be experienced as being sort of universal or applicable to a person's personal experience and not necessarily just limited to mine. experience because I think that there's nothing sort of special about the awe that I feel about being in a certain place it's but it's the importance is the connection to the awe that we all feel about being in special places in the landscape hmm 00:11:30.100 --> 00:12:15.580 That's interesting. It's like you're kind of going both ways. Like in your desire to not have it be about a specific place, it's like you're trying to get us away from intellectualizing your experience, right, and making it about... You know whatever is attached to that that location and you're trying to make it more specifically about that moment and that singular experience And then being more more specific about your and keeping it in that moment You're in a way making it more universal, you know making it more accessible to to other people to attach their own experience to that rather than just Going to the intellect going to what all that stuff means as places and ideas. That's cool. 00:12:15.880 --> 00:12:40.480 I love it when someone looks at my work and says, oh, that reminds me of when I was 25 years old and you know, I was out in the middle of this forest and I had this, you know, this specific experience, that to me is what it's all about. It's not about sort of what I experience, but it's about hopefully what the viewer has experienced in their life. 00:12:40.900 --> 00:12:52.700 Got it. So tell me about the materials you're using. It looks like you're using watercolor. And how do you differentiate? I'm also curious to hear how you differentiate between drawing and painting. Okay. 00:12:52.700 --> 00:15:22.800 To me, everything that is drawing, the watercolors, photography, all of that to me is prep work to try to identify things. subject matter for painting. So everything is pointing at oil painting. And so like, yes, on the website, there's a section of oil paintings in this section of, of, of my drawings and the drawings are, I go to a place, I see it, I make a drawing, come back. develop the color through watercolor and you know I might make 50 watercolors and five of them end up moving into into oil painting so it's a way of identifying how much how much juice is in this image how much juice is in that experience and and I try not to use up the energy by making the studies, but occasionally I do. Occasionally like, oh, that was nice, but it's gone. But sometimes I can do a study and say, yes, okay, now I understand what this is about, and I can go ahead and I can make an oil painting about it. In oil painting is a big investment in sort of time and materials. And so by making the studies in the watercolor and drawing, then I get an opportunity to think like whether this is going to work or not. As so many artists know, there's a special... of a problem that can happen with working from photographs because you see something like, Oh, that's great. And you photograph it in the photograph is great, but it may just be a good photograph. It may not be, it may not work itself into, into being a painting. So there's, if, if I'm, if I ever am working from a photograph, then that always has to pass through, um, you know, a watercolor before it becomes a painting to be able to take that millions of little bits of information that are in the photograph and distill it down to that, you know, a couple thousand bits of information that are in the watercolor. And so it tells me like, okay, this is what's important in this image. And here's how I can, how I can address it. 00:15:22.800 --> 00:15:44.180 I've often thought of art making and painting an editing process, and that sounds like what you're talking about. You're taking lots of tiny little pixels of information and generalizing that or editing down to something more consolidated, more essential, and then that's further refined perhaps in the final painting. 00:15:44.660 --> 00:16:04.840 Yeah. The lens is not making any decisions, but when you make – a work based on that, then you're making all kinds of decisions about this is what's important, this is what is light, this is what is dark, this is what is warm in color, this is what is cool in color, and those are exactly what I build paintings on. 00:16:04.840 --> 00:16:11.000 Do you ever show the watercolors as finished pieces or do you just think of them as preparatory works? 00:16:11.000 --> 00:17:11.800 I would be happy to. I haven't been showing them yet, but I would never. I wouldn't step back from doing that. The watercolors, they are primarily done in inks with there's a little bit of actual watercolor in them, but most of those are pigmented inks. and I've moved to pigmented inks because they have an even greater transparency than watercolor has and so you can actually sort of almost get us kind of a stained glass effect with the light bouncing off the paper behind them but some sometimes especially with what I'm doing exactly right now I've moved to using watercolor and also using gouache because I need some things to just sit on top rather than to have light come from behind with the pigmented inks are 00:17:11.800 --> 00:17:16.260 you actually putting those out into onto a pallet or into wells are you just 00:17:16.260 --> 00:17:29.140 taking it straight from the bottle Yeah, well, the pigmented inks in the bottle are way too strong, and so I download them into smaller bottles and then dilute it by 50% so that they're not so strong. 00:17:29.760 --> 00:17:30.620 What's the binder? 00:17:31.320 --> 00:17:53.700 Then I work out of the bottle, and then I have these little mixing palettes where I can mix the colors, because I only have... of eight or 10 ink colors, and I need to be able to mix those colors like we mix anything else. And so I have these very small little dishes I use for mixing the inks. 00:17:53.700 --> 00:17:59.680 - Got it. What's the binder in the inks? - Is that, is it a-- 00:17:59.680 --> 00:18:01.540 - Oh, I wish I knew. I think-- 00:18:01.540 --> 00:18:04.320 - Is it compatible with watercolor though, or? 00:18:04.320 --> 00:18:10.320 - Oh yes, absolutely, yeah. 'Cause I use watercolor and gouache right on top of them. Yeah, it's not a problem. 00:18:10.320 --> 00:18:14.800 - So would that be a gum arabic binder, or is that, is ink a totally different-- 00:18:14.800 --> 00:18:30.360 I don't really know. I've never gotten into ink making, drawing ink making, and so I'm not quite sure. I use multiple brands, and I think that they probably use different things. 00:18:30.400 --> 00:18:44.880 Right. Because it's very different than, say, an acrylic ink would have some kind of PVA binder, I assume, and then solvent-based inks are stinky. So you know that that's not what you're using. 00:18:44.880 --> 00:19:34.700 Yeah, these are all water-based. And most drawing inks, most liquid inks, fountain pen inks, are not very light-fast. But there are a few brands that are pigmented inks. that are quite lightfast. I've done lightfastness testing on all the inks that I use to make sure they don't have any nasty surprises of things that will fade quickly. And one brand that I've been... that I've been using a lot of is called the Atramentus, the Atramentus, and they are actually document inks and so they're intended, they're formulated to last for a very long time and the light passes I've done on them has shown that yes they are really very solid. 00:19:34.700 --> 00:19:41.980 Are you using facilities at the paint manufacturing place to test light fastness, or how do you test that? 00:19:42.440 --> 00:19:52.400 Yeah, I do light fastness testing at the factory every year, and then I will always slide some personal things into it, like these inks. 00:19:52.400 --> 00:20:08.660 Got it. How cool is that? Well, I'm looking at the ink pieces and some of them are just dynamite. There's one in particular. It's got this blue tree on the left side of the composition. They would make a great show just as on their own. 00:20:09.160 --> 00:20:09.880 Thank you. 00:20:10.260 --> 00:20:29.720 Beautiful. So the preparatory sketches make their way back into the studio and then might be developed into larger oil paintings. Yes. Can you tell me about your palette? What colors do you choose? Do you have a palette that you tend to rely on heavily, or do you mix it up a lot? 00:20:29.860 --> 00:20:32.420 Not surprisingly, I have a lot of colors on my palette. 00:20:34.520 --> 00:22:07.900 Maybe I've counted, there's about 22 locations on my palette where colors can live. Things that I go to quite... They're actually... Well, now we're getting into my approach to color, of course, really quickly. I feel that what we do in terms of making artist colors is we make concentrated emotions in it and we put them in a tube. And so these 22 locations on my palette are 22 different sort of psychic energies that I want access to that I feel like these are important to me. I'm going to go to these a lot. And so in any one painting, maybe four or five get used, maybe six or seven if it gets complicated. But throughout a year, those 22 locations will always end up having something there and being used depending upon the piece that I'm working on. Of course, you know, I have many more colors that are on my storage shelves that if I need a particular color like transparent earth red does not own a space in my palette, but it's in the cabinet. So if I ever come to a place where I really need to transfer earth red in this color, I can go get it and get a little squirt without it having to live on my palette for a long time. 00:22:07.900 --> 00:22:18.480 forever. Those 22 locations, are they an actual, they're actual paint on the palette or is this just like ways of conceptualizing? Okay, so it's actual 00:22:18.480 --> 00:23:28.820 place on your palette. Yeah, so yeah, at the edge of my palette, you know, there's a perfect chromatic arrangement starting with cold yellow on the left, we're working down through warm green on the farthest right. And so then I just worked through the spectrum of where those 22 colors would exist. And the reason I break it up like that is because yellow is the most sensitive color on the palette. If you want a good, clean yellow, it needs to have its own sort of spot on the palette that nothing else touches because most of the whole palette, when it touches yellow, will make that yellow go green. And so I have a little area, the far left of my palette, is only where... clean yellows are mixed and used. And if I want to have a little bit of, if I want yellow and a green, I take the yellow to the green. I don't bring the green to the yellow. Because then it would just get into everything and prevent me from having clean yellows. 00:23:29.200 --> 00:23:34.000 What about phthalo? Do you have that quarantined off on part of your palate? 00:23:34.620 --> 00:25:00.440 No. Over the decades, I've learned to manage phthalo blue and phthalo green, and dioxazine purple and quinacridone red, all of those modern organic pigments that have such incredibly high tinting strengths. I've learned to sort of manage them and know that a tiny little swipe of the knife through them will give me what I want. So with my system... All of those colors live in a band at the edge of my palette, at the back edge of the palette. And so I almost never take a brush and swipe through that color and bring it down. I always pick up exactly what I need with a knife. and I take it to my mixing area. So the color stays really very clean, and if I want a tiny little amount of phthalo green, then I can just pick it up at the end of my knife and take it to where I'm mixing color and to be able to manage it that way. Yeah, early in my career, I certainly ruined many paintings by not being able to manage the tinting strength of phthalo green and doxazine purple. And even for a mineral color, Prussian blue is extraordinarily strong. And I've ruined many paintings by getting too much Prussian blue all over the place. 00:25:00.800 --> 00:25:13.920 So once you mix a color or a series of colors for a particular passage in a painting, will you go then and wipe clean that area of your palette that you've been mixing on so you don't contaminate? 00:25:13.960 --> 00:27:33.440 No, because I don't. Because I'm pretty strict about how I mix color on the palette. And there's a video that I did almost 20 years ago called... navigating color space. And in that video, there was sort of a palette management section of the video that showed that, you know, so essentially this part of it is that below the location of that clean yellow is where all my clean yellows are mixed. and then moving over to the right, there's red. And so all of the reds are mixed there, whether they're light reds or dark reds or warm reds or cool reds, they're all mixed there. And then moving over to the right a little bit more, okay, here's where the blues are mixed. And then moving over to where the greens are mixed. So I keep all of the hues that are being used in a painting mixed. segregated to their own little section of the palette. And it might sound overly, overly, overly controlling, but believe me, once it takes only a small amount of time to be learned how to use a palette in that way. And what it allows is, The ability to very quickly go to what you're doing So if your focus is on the painting, you don't want your focus on the palette And so if if you mix willy-nilly all over the place Then every time you turn back to the palette like what was that? You know 10 minutes ago I mixed this color and it was a really beautiful Peachy color like where did I put it? Okay. Well, there it is Well, I just spent two seconds, three seconds, breaking my concentration. But if all of my peachy colors are always mixing exactly the same spot, or all of my sky blues are always mixing exactly the same spot, I turn back, oh, there it is. And then it just provides continuity in the painting process by using the palette in such a controlled way. And believe me, it doesn't take long to... to learn how to do this. 00:27:34.080 --> 00:28:38.440 Yeah, I've preached the same things in many classes over the years and have shared your video many times, the color space video. Love just the mental model of having it be a three-dimensional, a 3D color space. That made so much sense to me when I saw it for the first time and find it just a really powerful way to think about color. But also like this idea of palette hygiene, you know, like, It takes away so much just overhead of thought and anxiety. And just like you're saying, it allows you to focus on what you really want to care about and focus on, and that's a painting. If you know exactly where things are going to be when you reach for them, all that energy can then be focused on the important stuff. And I agree that I don't think enough attention is paid to that, just how much benefit can come from that. developing in it and it does it's not gonna be the same for everybody and it's not gonna make sense for this it's everybody in the same way but just having a system where you can reliably find what you're looking for can make 00:28:38.440 --> 00:28:45.960 such a big difference yeah thank you thanks so much for passing that information on it's that's great 00:28:44.100 --> 00:28:54.140 Are you still selling that video? I bought it so long ago, I have it on DVD and I've ripped it to my computer. So that's how I, can people find that on the website or are you selling the DVD? 00:28:55.300 --> 00:29:00.100 There's a little video section on the website and it lives in, it lives there permanently. 00:29:00.100 --> 00:29:18.100 Okay. Yeah, that's fantastic. If you haven't watched that, and you have so many other great educational tools on there, and the production value is high. I've always really appreciated the effort that you've put into making some really high quality videos. content. 00:29:18.100 --> 00:29:40.500 Thank you. Yeah. These were all done before this modern age where anybody can just set up a camera and shoot it and put it on the web. This was when you needed a sound man and you need a camera man and you need a lighting guy. Right, yeah. We don't use, the world doesn't do that much anymore. 00:29:40.500 --> 00:30:11.900 No, it was a substantial investment, monetarily and time-wise, to make those videos as well as you did. I mean, even still, to make them as well as you did back then, it would be more of an investment than just pointing your phone camera at what you're doing. They're good-looking videos. Thank you. I'm not going to belabor the point and ask you to name all 22 of your colors, but what are your warm and cool blues? I was looking through your painting of icebergs, and I was kind of curious to hear yours. what your blue palette is. Can you name your piece? 00:30:12.000 --> 00:31:03.200 Yeah. Ultramarine blue is my warmest blue. And there is a spot for a cobalt blue, but it doesn't come out all the time. There's a spot for Prussian blue. Especially having gone to Japan a few years ago, I really brought out Prussian blue and saw how the Japanese printmakers used their indigo. And our Prussian blue is a very good oil color match for indigo. So that always has a spot. And but the coolest blue is manganese blue. So I've always really loved manganese blue. It's such a refreshing, cool, clean blue. So those are the blues. And then phthalo comes out occasionally. Phthalo blue comes out occasionally. 00:31:03.200 --> 00:31:27.600 So in your sky where it gradates into a darker value up at the top, you're using a cool blue. Would that be the manganese or are you using something like – I know it's going to be different per painting. But like I see there's ultramarine a lot of times in the icebergs themselves. And then in the sky and in the foreground water, it kind of gradates into something cooler. Is that – 00:31:27.600 --> 00:33:21.620 The icebergs, since they're almost all blue, they have almost every blue in the shop in them. And so, yeah, there might be a lot of ultramarine, but there's also an awful lot of manganese blue and the Prussian blue and the cobalt blue come out and the phthalo blue. There is every blue in the shop is in them just to try to... Well, I think with color, there's a very important sort of dynamic that I think is important. And music has this also. You know, with a violin player, when they play a long note, It's just not, you know, a finger down and the bow on the string. But that finger gives a little vibrato. That finger waggles back and forth. And so as they're playing, you know, a C sharp or something, by the finger waggling, the sound goes back and forth across this midline of what the note is. And it gives that note an incredible amount of richness and character and color, actually. And so I find that in painting, if I'm doing a painting that has a lot of like one color in it, like it's blue. Well, that blue is going to be much more interesting if it gradates over color. over the whole space with many different blues in it and just gives that blue so much more sort of richness and depth and interest to have it have You know a whole bunch of blues anything it gets lighter it gets darker it gets grayer in Spots and gets more where it gets cooler and So yeah, so everything is in those iceberg paintings. There's like every blue. 00:33:22.000 --> 00:33:37.260 I love that comparison to a musical note being modulated up and down. Let's get into some of the Gamblin art products. You're focused almost entirely on oil paint, right? 00:33:38.140 --> 00:33:51.100 Yes, we make... Oil painting materials, there are two lines of color and a full line of mediums and grounds, varnish. 00:33:52.780 --> 00:34:01.740 - Did you ever have any plan or intention to branch out into other medium or is oil paint just always been the primary focus? 00:34:01.740 --> 00:34:58.540 - Well, it has always been a primary focus. You know, in printmaking, we also make oil-based printmaking inks also. But, yeah, that's, you know, we've always been really happy to be focused on one thing. We're a specialist house. And I know that in our industry, the usual is like, well, we have a factory. So, like, yes, let's make oil colors. Okay, now let's make acrylics and watercolors. Right. Sort of like, you know... Grumbacher, for those of us who are old enough to remember Grumbacher and the incredibly strong and dominant company that it was, they made everything for everybody. And there are many arbitral companies in the world who aspire to do that. And we've always been happy to be specialists, to be focused on sort of one thing. 00:34:58.600 --> 00:35:20.980 I think that's fantastic. It seems like your product line reflects a, I don't know, a focus on alkyd in particular. Why alkyd and not having represented more traditional media, you know, linseed oil, walnut oil, poppy seed, other varieties of resin? Why the focus on Alkin? 00:35:21.540 --> 00:38:56.200 That's a great question. And in the early years of the company, we did have some natural resins that we were making a few materials out of. DeMar varnish. We were making a few materials using DeMar varnish. And... But very quickly after the company was founded, I realized that as a painter and as a manufacturer sending out materials into artist studios, that I wanted the products to be as safe as possible. And the problem with natural resins is that they demand that strong solvents be brought into the studio. You can't make a DeMar-based varnish or a DeMar-based medium without using a solvent as strong as turpentine. And I just felt that that was part of an old world that we needed to leave behind. And then through my work with the conservation community, especially under the influence of Rene Delary, he showed through his work that natural resins, especially damar, were the least stable materials that existed. lived in a painter's studio and that Essentially telling us that you know move on there are better things You guys need to move on from this stuff and so it was not only from the safety standpoint but also from a conservation standpoint that leaving natural residents behind was something that that we decided we wanted to do and We were fortunate, it's very fortunate that alkyd resins will allow us to formulate mediums with absolutely the mildest solvent that exists. Our Gamsol has 0% aromatics and it has absolutely no odor at all. the alkyd resins will accept that as as a as a solvent so when we make a painting medium you know it's it's like paint you have a bunch of raw materials that come into it so there's alkyd resin that that is in it there are some some dryers that are in it so you can you can sort of engineer what the dry time is going to be and sometimes there is a body agent like in Neal McGill there's a bit of a body agent there to give it that that very soft gel that it has but all of them have solvent that's in them to determine what its viscosity is going to be and what it's essentially it's working properties What is what's it going to feel like? The solvent component in there really drives a lot of how it how it works and how it feels. And so. And it's a solvent component in many traditional materials that brings the greatest degree of hazard into the artist studio. And so the alkyl resins allow us to only formulate with with Gamsol and it's extremely mild solvent. It's not ecologically harmful. The only thing you would not want to do with it is is is drink it. 00:38:55.600 --> 00:39:17.960 - Got it. - Yeah. - I don't imagine that would go over well. Obviously the focus is on safety, the focus is on maybe environmental concerns. Were there any negative compromises that were made? Maybe that's not a nice thing to ask, but are there things about the traditional materials that were somehow materially better? 00:39:17.960 --> 00:40:39.000 - There's only one technique that a D'Amar-based medium will do that our Alka mediums won't do. And that is, Damar is very brittle as a material. I mean, you take a lump of Damar and you hit it with a hammer and it just sort of smashes like a piece of glass. Well, it gives that brittle quality to paint also and varnishes. And so when you make a medium out of Damar, it is going to be naturally more brittle quality. than an alkyd medium. An alkyd medium is going to be very tough and flexible, and it's not going to be brittle at all. And so, you know, a traditional painting practice has been to scrape down through paint layers to reveal what's down below. And with a damar-based medium that is more brittle, you can scrape down through layers more, really pretty easily. And with an alkyd medium, scraping down through layers is a very difficult thing to do because the medium is tough and flexible and doesn't allow you to scrape through. But that's the only drawback that I have found that traditional mediums would do that our modern mediums won't do. 00:40:39.000 --> 00:40:47.080 - Got it. And in terms of yellowing, how does alkyd medium compare to the various kinds of natural oils? 00:40:48.640 --> 00:42:25.580 - Well, it's important, I think, to think of alkyd, we call alkyd, alkyd resin. And so we can think of it, oh, it's a resin. But it's actually much closer to being an oil than it is a resin because it's made from oil. So the ones that we use are made from safflower oil. You make an alkyd resin out of linseed oil and it's much, much more yellow. So safflower oil are alkyd resins that have the best color. And so like all oil-based materials, they're going to change color as they age. And so you want to – the idea is to have materials, to have oils that are going to change color. to the least amount. And that we found that with alkyd resins, that we get that. That there is a little bit of warming up, as there is with all oils drying. But that warming up is acceptable. When you make traditional mediums out of damar, there's oil in there also. And typically, the oil that is used has been stand oil or linseed oil. Stand oil is made from linseed oil, so essentially... The oil in a lot of traditional mediums has tended to yellow or warm up as much or more than alkyd mediums do just because of the linseed oil component in those mediums. 00:42:26.200 --> 00:42:35.640 I didn't realize that resins or alkyd resins were... are they distilled from? Is it a distilling process from the safflower oil? What does that look like? 00:42:35.920 --> 00:45:56.380 Okay, here's, I think, the way to think about it is the area of bodied oils. As oil painting has passed through the generations, the technical generations, you know, we have pre-industrial revolution, then we have the industrial revolution itself, and now, you know, from... year 1900, we have sort of post-industrial revolution. And every period of time, there has, you know, that technology has given oil painters a way to solve a problem. You know, there was, you know, we've been through... we've been through traditional gesso and then we, then oil grounds were developed and then acrylic grounds were developed. So like three different periods of time, we have three different ways to, to put a grounding on a canvas. And so that has happened really recently. quite a lot. And so to think about alkyd resin, it's best to think about bodied oil. So it first started out with sun-thickened oil, where they would take linseed oil or walnut oil, and they would put it up on a roof, or poppy oil, put it up on a roof, and slowly let it oxidize so that it would thicken. oxidized. That's the important operator here. Oil being put out to absorb oxygen. And oxidizing is what oil does in order to dry. So it has taken a step on the way to drying. And then with the Industrial Revolution, they figured out how to do that by heat-bodying oil. So they take the oil and they boil it and with oxygen being able to get to it from the top, and that was produced what stand oil is. So sun-thickened oil turned into stand oil. And now alkyl resin and stand oil is more oxidized generally than sun-thickened oil is. And so with the... With more modern times, alkyd resins were developed, and they are made very similar to what stand oil was made with, but they are so highly polymerized, so highly oxidized, that they have solvent in there to keep those chains of molecules apart. And that's how alkyl resins dry so fast, is they dry like a resin does by that solvent evaporating out of it. So, there's essentially a polymerized oil that dries like a resin because of the solvent that's in it. So, I think that once you understand the genesis of how it can resin, it doesn't seem like such a high-tech material. It's really sort of based on, comes out of the history of heat-bodying oil. 00:45:56.400 --> 00:46:23.040 - Right, yeah, it sounds like a natural extension of what was already happening. - Yeah, yeah. - Taking it to the natural conclusion. So I've heard you say before that Galkid could be diluted with Gamsol by 50% and still retain its binding properties. - Oh, it's amazing, yeah. - Is that right? As opposed to like acrylic paint, like PVA, I don't think you can dilute more than like 10% and have it retain its binding properties. Yeah. Right? 00:46:23.300 --> 00:47:20.280 Yeah. No, the alkyd resins are really, really very, very strong. I mean, yes, exactly. You can take galcid, which has our highest percentage of alkyd in it, reduce it. in equal parts with, with Gamsol, with solvent, and, uh, you would still have a lot of binding power. In fact, that that's one of our recommendations is if you are starting out a painting and you want to follow, you know, fat over lean guidelines, uh, and, and galcid is your medium and you don't want it super, super, uh, closed initial surface, taking that Gamsol and, uh, and diluting it will, you know, it reduces the fat by 50% that's in there and allows you to start that painting and everything will adhere quite well. 00:47:20.480 --> 00:47:32.480 Oh, very cool. Man, I've got so many questions I'd love to ask you about. about your oil grounds and the wax, cold wax medium. There's another five hours of questions I have. 00:47:32.820 --> 00:47:51.100 Well, Trent, I really appreciate you having me on the show, but we can do this again. So if you want to do something that's just, you know, based on the beginnings of paintings and the ends of paintings, we can deal with grounds and varnishes at a later date, I'd be happy to come back. 00:47:51.100 --> 00:48:01.980 You're generous. Thank you so much. I would love to have you back sometime. Maybe just in conclusion, can you tell us a little bit about the conservation colors and what that's all about? 00:48:01.980 --> 00:53:28.160 I'd be happy to. That's conservation colors is something that is very dear to my heart. I've been involved with painting from the beginning, from making materials and raw materials, clear through the painting process, and then naturally through that, I eventually got interested in, well, what about the conservation of paintings? How do conservators... keep our artistic heritage up on the walls and looking great. And so that caused me, as I was traveling around, to do the business of paint making and education. Whenever I was in a city, I would go visit the major museum and get to know the people in the conservation departments. And in some museums, there are scientific departments. And so when I met the people at the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., the head of the department introduced me to the head of the science department. And so he told me all the things that we were working on. And I was amazed. And so here they are working, solving their problems and their problems themselves. are issues that we have also. And so I started going to the National Gallery whenever I was in Washington, D.C. and got to know the people there really quite well. And Rene Delary, who was the head of the science department at that time, had been working on the problem of of natural resins in use of conservation because he knew that whenever a conservator varnished a painting with natural resins that that set the clock ticking that eventually that painting would come back to the conservation studio not because it had any other problem but because the natural resin varnish had a problem. will have yellowed and perhaps even darkened, changing the color intensities and values of the painting so that the varnish would have to be removed and replaced. And he thought that, you know, there's got to be a better way. So he searched for resins throughout all of the industry and did... testing on them and found that there were two resins that were particularly stable. They were remarkably stable, you know, really just by accident. And so the first one he focused on was Regal Res 1094, and he wrote papers on creating varnishes based on Regal Res 1094, which, And that became what we based our gambar on. The National Gallery supported us in bringing out a varnish for artists based on Rene's work. But also when he was identifying these varnishes, there was a second varnish called Larapal A81 that was equally as stable. but it required a stronger solvent in order to dissolve it. And so he thought that, well, we've got a really perfect varnish resin in the regal res. The laripal may make a great color for as a conservation color binder. And so in 1995, he kicked off a research project with, um, Joe Whitten, who's now in private practice in Houston to work on the team, and Mark Leonard, who was the head of conservation at the Getty at that time. The three of them started a research project looking into laripal as a binder for a conservation color. And they very quickly got in over their heads with the paint making part of it. And they invited me to join the team as the paint maker. So we did this five-year project. We made the color. They sent it out all over the world to major conservation labs to use the color and give feedback. And in 2000 at the IIC Melbourne conference, they delivered their papers on this new material. And that's when I was free to release Gamblin Conservation Colors to the world. So it was all based on research that was done at the National Gallery. And now our conservation colors, based on this Lara Paul A81, I wouldn't necessarily say that we were the biggest color in the world. I have no idea to gauge that, but I do know that our colors are being used all over the world in the major museums and conservation houses. And going back to the first thing I said, since the Lara Paul and the Regal Rez are so stable as materials, once, conservators won't say this, but I like to say this, is that when they use those materials on those paintings, the clock doesn't start ticking anymore. It's like they're so stable that they can be permanent parts of the painting for centuries. 00:53:28.500 --> 00:53:48.540 Got it. I imagine these are significantly more expensive to produce than your average artist oil colors. Does this technology or this material make its way down into the artist's grade oil paint, or is it just a separate issue? 00:53:48.540 --> 00:54:40.600 Yeah, it's very much a separate issue. The Larapal color... is not very painterly. So an artist not only has a solvent component much stronger than we typically have in artist studios, but it's not very painterly. Because when a conservator repairs damage in a painting, if there's a little bit of a hole, they fill that hole with a filling material. And then they use our color just very much over the top of it, like it was maybe a little bit of a watercolor. And that, you know, that will work. But if you tried to do like an abstract expressionist painting with our conservation colors, it really wouldn't work very well. It doesn't have the flow that a great oil paint has. 00:54:40.600 --> 00:55:11.820 Got it. Yeah, the priorities are very different. I had always, when I think of conservation, I know very little about it, but I would have thought that the priority would have been to create materials that mimicked the original artwork. But it sounds like that's not really the... That's not the goal at all. Is there some advantage to not having it? I guess you could tell what's been added to the work of art as opposed to what's the original. 00:55:11.980 --> 00:56:11.420 No, it's not important to... Say if you have a painting from 1700 and it has Gamboge in it. It's not important that Gamboge is used to restore that painting because... What's important about the painting is just what the color is. And so you can mix that color of gamboge with any set, with a specific set of modern colors and have the reflectance value be different. be the same. So, um, so in terms of compatibility, there's not really an issue there. No, there's not. There's, there's not a problem because part of the definition of, of oil painting materials is that they are inert. So they don't react with any of the binder that you are mixing those colors into or with anything that you are, um, having them come to contact with. So, inertness is part of the definition of suitable material for 00:56:11.420 --> 00:56:28.880 oil colors. Got it. Well, Robert, this has been fantastic. I'm excited to learn all these things and just have always been really impressed by you and your work. So, it was thrilled that I got a chance to talk to you. I really appreciate your time. 00:56:29.280 --> 00:56:33.300 Thank you, Trent. It's a pleasure to speak with you. Nice to meet you, too. Thank you. 00:56:33.300 --> 00:57:01.900 Thank you, Robert. Thank you for making time for this conversation. I hope we get to talk again soon. It is such a privilege to get to talk with someone I admired from a distance for so many years. And thank you for listening to Debalon. I'm glad you're there. Soon-ish, I will have another conversation for you, so come back. Also rate this podcast on iTunes, make a donation on the website, and tell friends and family. And go practice some good palate hygiene.