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Peter Arguimbau Painting Techniques
Posted on Thursday, November 19 2009 @ 22:55:06 CST by Peter as Admin
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Peter Layne Arguimbau is a contemporary artist who has painted in the Flemish tradition for over 40 years. These techniques come from a life time of experience recreating the Luminist tradition of the Dutch guilds in the Golden Age of painting.
Layne first learned to paint at age eight when he spent hours watching his father, Vincent Arguimbau, a portrait painter in his studio in Darien, Connecticut. It was in that same year that Frank Mason came to his home in 1958. Vincent and Frank were both students under Frank Vincent Dumond at the Art Students league in New York City. Mason took over the class in 1951 and would continue teaching there until 2008. Layne studied Flemish Technique for 14 years under Mason; landscape painting in Vermont in the summer and figure painting at the League. At the time, Frank Mason was using Maroger Medium given to him by Reginald Marsh in 1956. On his visit Mason showed us how to make the Maroger Medium. The artists remembers; “We were cooking linseed oil with lead in the basement and filled the whole house with this acrid smoke, what a thrill.”
Maroger Medium is a transparent fast drying gel medium, invented by Jacques Maroger. Technical director of the Louvre Laboratories, Maroger migrated to the US on the rumbles of World War II. Disheartened by the bad quality in modern paintings as compared to Renaissance paintings he was prompted to investigate the painting mediums of the Old Masters. In 1948 he published “ The Secret Formulas and Techniques of the Masters” describing the first lead mediums of Van Dyck, Rubens, Rembrandt.
Simultaneously with his art training, Arguimbau interned with restorer, Pierro Manonni, trained at the Instituto del Restauro in Rome under Cesere Brandi where for ten years they replicated painting mediums from 15th & 16th C manuscripts. After twenty years working with Maroger Medium with dastardly results of darkening and always tacky as a result of mastic, Arguimbau formulated his own gel medium using harder resins.
Layne now grinds his pigments from powders, makes his own panels using gesso grounds and lead grounds for canvas. Cooks his own oilly-resinous mediums with hard resins of amber, sandarac and colophony. Primarily using raw materials Layne has been able to maintain a consistent quality. Over his life time many paint materials have disappeared or changed dramatically; tube paints are thinned more and more using stablelizers and resonates for shelf life. Many solvents and mediums have been discontinued because of toxicity. “This doesn’t bother me.” says Layne, “In my workshop I have been making my own mediums the same way since I was a kid. I get my materials from chemical supply houses, rarely setting foot in a fine art store. I would feel very discouraged if I had to compromise my quality and reinvent my technique every time a product was discontinued.
Arguimbau has now begun milling his own panels out of hardwoods, white and red oak, and poplar. Panels are traditionally the preferred support for painting because they are the most durable, and refract light for more luminosity. First the logs are quarter sawing, sticked and dried where only the straightest lengths are selected. Next the planks are put through a twenty inch planner, then given a coat of iron oxide to pickle and stabilize the wood and finally rolling on several coats of rabbit skin gesso in between sanding. Presently hard woods are grown too quickly making it impossible to isolate the wood from checking. The only stable supports today are composition boards of glue and saw dust. By milling slow growth urban lumber, Arguimbau has superior quality panels to paint on.
This is a brief description of the painting methods of the artist in creating his luminist effects. Layne Arguimbau paints in a specially designed studio where the north wall is all windows covered with shutters to control the amount and direction of the light, modeled after the studios of the Dutch Masters. Natural light is God’s gift and by painting under north light it remains constant not allowing the shadows to rotate with the sun as with a southern exposure. Opening just one shutter directs a shaft of light down on the subject in a dramatic effect, in what appears to be a dark room, however the eye quickly adjusts and the light values become clear. In preparing to paint the materials have to be of high quality, consistent, organized and fresh. A painting must be well thought out and designed starting with a fixed charcoal under drawing. Many paintings are unrealized because of indecision and muddling. Arguimbau in this regard remains a purist; grinding fresh color every day. The whites are made into a cake of white lead; from the Pacheco Manuscript, 1635 (lead carbonate with whiting to precipitate the oil and when made properly looks like a Cremnitz white). The other colors are earth colors, naples yellow, yellow ochre, terra Rosa, terra verte, lakes, umbers and ivory black. Arguimbau sets his palette up in a scale from light to dark. Later, he introduces stronger primary colors; thalo blue, cadmium yellow and red for glazing. By grinding pigments from powders, Layne can achieve maximum control using heavy thick impastos and ultra thin glazes of color to create the contrast of opacity and transparency necessary for vivid illusions. His mediums of cleaned and cured linseed oils are cooked with mineral salts and resins for very fast drying which allows super imposing many layers of paint without disturbing the initial drawing. The quality of light is achieved by honing; glazing hues of color toward a concentric effect. With transparency the light passes through the pigment and reflects off the ground creating a magical third dimension. For this reason grinding pigments becomes essential in controlling the thinness of the glaze for prismatic effects, as well as thick opacity, and speedy drying time in capturing a luminist quality.
During the past 40 years, Layne Arguimbau has perfected his techniques and is now assembling his book. "The Invention of Oil Painting, a fresh look at the way painters painted from the Renaissance to the Present." Like the work of the Flemish Masters, Layne Arguimbau’s paintings have an extreme quality of light that is timeless.
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