Now that I've finished painting the two black and white pieces of works, which began with a notion that I could depict "atmosphere" with an ink brush and a water brush, I need to have them mounted. Wet mounted that is.
I keep harping on the topic of mounting works done on Xuan because in my neck of the woods people are still pretty naïve about this practice. They either don't think that is so different from stretching an oil canvas over a frame, or from plain old matting a painting or picture. As I had mentioned before, even our local attraction which supposedly promote Asian art and culture would display unmounted works in their office lobbies. I also personally know people who have sold framed, unmounted works on Xuan and are surreptitiously elated because the buyers of their works didn't know better. Neither of these do justice to works done on Xuan, hence my insistence on writing about mounting.
Enough soliloquy. I should take heed of the name of a restaurant here, "Shut up and Eat".
My works are done on cicada skin Xuan and they are extremely fragile. Great care must be paid to the handling of this paper, either when wet or dry.
The painting was laid face down on a clear sheet of plastic and wetted thoroughly. Water relaxes the fibers in the paper. Wrinkles invariably formed and the painting now looked like the skin of an old person. The trick was to spray more water onto it, such that the paper actually floated on a thin film of water. This allowed the wet Xuan to move freely on top of the plastic and most of the wrinkles and air bubbles could be stretched out.
Starch was brushed onto the back of the painting. The stiff brush further pressed out any remaining wrinkles and air bubbles. A piece of regular Xuan was put onto the back of the freshly starched painting. Now that the painting was starched to the backing, the two pieces were lifted as one off the plastic and draped onto my wood board to dry.
The photo above showed the wet painting with its backing being hung out to dry.
The drying process renders the fibers taut in the paper. The starch and the backing Xuan add strength and rigidity to the once whimsy cicada skin Xuan. Remember the starched shirts and trousers in the old days? I certainly do. It's the same idea.
I would use a double weight Xuan paper for my backing in this setting. The double weight Xuan is thicker and more durable. This is a 30 inch painting, so the two pieces of paper absorbed quite a bid of water (and starch). The weight of all that water could easily tear the wet backing paper when being lifted from the plastic and transported to the wood board. Try imagining how flimsy a wet piece of paper towel can get. Now imagine lifting and handling one that is 40 inches long, laden with water.
I knew I needed to be gentle and careful when doing the mounting, yet I still managed to nick a hole in my paper. That seems to be my signature move.
This was not the time to panic. A very wet brush saturated with water could gently refloat the nicked area and tease the tear back to its original state, or at least greatly minimize the damage. Never use a tweezer or you would tear the piece off and end up with a hole, guaranteed.
The other painting, C'era una volta il West was mounted the same way.
In the photo above one could clearly see the white that was painted on the back of a dune and the tree. I used the white pigment to guarantee a solid white background for those two features, without adding distracting brushstrokes to the front of the painting.
The backing Xuan and the painting done on cicada skin Xuan were hung on my wood board to dry. In this state of dampness, one could clearly see the effect of the white from the back.
This was how the painting looked when dried. Notice how flat and taut the piece was. It was like being ironed onto the wood board.
Again, the white from the back revealed nicely, without being obtrusive. The fact that no visible "white" brushstrokes were seen bestowed a much more natural feel to the painting. This harmony reminds me of a dark pupil next to the white of the eye. The pupil is not a button stitched onto the sclera, but a natural looking component of our eye. The same can be said about the negative space in the lower left corner. That void was done on purpose, albeit without the help of white pigment on the back of the paper. That one vacant corner gave room for the painting to "breathe".
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