Post Seminar Thoughts

At work we have this thing called the Paint Bible. Within the thick book are solutions and reasons for common technical paint problems. The book goes through common interior and exterior substrates like Gib, Plaster, Cedar, Shadow Clad, James Hardy Board and all the rest. Paint problems occur all the time. They are usually caused by the painter not correctly preparing the surface, or painting in undesirable conditions or simply using the wrong coating system for the substrate they are trying to protect. I'd like to recreate these problems as mini series.

I have always enjoyed pushing paint to its limits. I like to investigate alternate ways of working the the material, and working with the outcomes instead of forcing the paint to my own will. I do this out of curiosity. Paint technology is so fascinating. Commercial paint's primary purpose is to preserve and protect a substrate. Wearing itself out before it wears a structure/surface out. Because of that it has to be made strong. Commercial paints are meant to last. Companies compete with each other for the longevity of the coating itself as well as fade resistance of pigment containing paints. Albiet, there will always be the cheap brands which are not designed to last. For the elite brands, new technology comes out all the time. Cool Colour technology for example is a new technology which allows for darker colours to be painted on substrates prone to warping or cracking. How it works is an undercoat containing titanium dioxide is applied first, (Resene recommends 'Quick Dry' or 'Lumbersider' as both contain high quantities of this pigment), then, the cool colour formulated topcoat is applied. The top coat contains U tinter instead of B tinter which contains Blue/Black coloured pigments. U Tinter is used as a substitute to allow the infrared heat to penetrate the dark outer layer and reflect off the titanium dioxide undercoat. This protects wood substrates from warping and plaster from cracking in the heat of summer. Amazing.

What about colour? I will continue to use the paint I find in the paint recycling. This will naturally reflect colour choices for interior design, as I am literally salvaging material which has been used for decorative as well as protective purposes. Therefore as another layer to my material investigations is a colour investigation. Colour choice is reflective of culture. Western cultures tend to select whites and off-whites, for many subjective reasons, but also as a response to religion, (David Batchelor mentions this in his book Chromophobia). In the West where Christianity in its many forms is popular, white gives an essence of purity, heavenly and the divine, due to biblical references. I don't believe people come into a paint store and choose white because they are thinking of heaven, but I do think that the semiotic, symbol obsessed human mind can't escape the historical doctrine of white=clean. The ideology is often present but usually exists without interrogation of its origins from the individual.

So i'd like to marry these two conceptual thoughts together. This would allow for both of my interests to develop in a synchronous sense.

Materials I need to gather:

-Aqualine Gib

-Cedar

-Pine or ply

-Plaster

-Powder-coated metal