The whole exhibition process has been a learning journey. Going in to it i knew that it was going to be harder than expected, however there was so much more technical work that went into it than i thought. It took three people to put up the painting (also not what i was expecting). The reason being because we had to put a piece of timber up to hang it, and because of the size of the piece and it being an unstretched canvas this proved to be quite difficult. We noticed from using a leveller, that the cut of the canvas wasn’t straight nor was the blue edge around the orange so this was also another problem that we encountered. There was also a noticeable crease going along the top of the canvas from where it was rolled up but this crease also wasn’t straight. To fix this I had to place the top of the canvas roughly along the crease of the edge of the timber, staple it and cut the edges of the canvas with a scalpel land ruler, however this did not fix the the blue part of the painting.
Another problem I encountered was the rough edges of the canvas. When painting I didn’t properly go over it with colour as I didn’t know wether I was going to stretch it, cut it, or use it. What happened was that the timber was cut with the measurements of only the main canvas rather than with the edges. What this left at the top was sagging over the edges of the timber. What I did to help this was put a pin underneath to create a level for the edge of the canvas to sit on.
Not painting the edges also created another problem, because the colour is in patches some blank canvas was left creating light. This was directing attention away from the centre as you could see brightness around the edge. In order to fix this i did the simple task of painting over it which in turn made the painting look so much better.
Lighting was also an issue, I had asked for a low lite room but the lights in my room were very artificial and bright, not complementary or meditative at all. And there was a glare at the top of my painting which was quite distracting. At first I only covered the light nearest to my painting as I shared a room with two other people by using black tissue paper and white card however the lighting was still horrible in the room. However after talking to both of the people i share a room with they had wanted low lighting as well, I asked them if they would mind if I covered up both the lights. The first shade that I made was a bit too dark to put on both the lights, so I made two other with just thin paper. I was advised to use tracing paper but it didn’t do much to solve the problem. From the thin newsprint paper it made an orange tinge which created a calming atmosphere in the room.
Due to transport my canvas was very creased. After talking to Myfanwy and expressing my concern she advised me to using boiling water and a paint brush to get out the creases. This was something I didn’t know about before, the boiling water shrinks the canvas a little bit to get out the creases. It did get some out but the result wasn’t as significant as I had hoped.
I had also been advised to put up some of my prints by two tutors, I did put them up on either side of the door to my exhibition space, however it took away from the people’s work beside it and I was told to take it down as I already had a piece of work up.
Agnes Kindt 