Hello, everyone!
While I am excited about moving forward on my thesis project, I anticipate a few challenges that I will need to overcome. One of the first issues that may arise is the complexity of the painting I chose. While I initially bought my supplies based upon the artwork, The Vision of Saint Eustace, I am coming to the realization that I may be putting too much stress on myself in order to be able to effectively complete three recreations of it. I believe that within this next week, I need to reevaluate what painting I will be recreating, one a little more simpler in content, solely because of the time constraint in which I have on the project and experimentation. I think I will have to try and research another tempera painting done on oak in order not to waste the material I bought, or find the receipt and exchange what I have with another.
Another issue is coming down to materials too. I was thinking about hand crafting pigments using raw materials like pressed and dried flowers, stones, dirt, and further that I would gather locally, but again, the time constraint may put a damper on this as well as the weather. I may change my plan to focus on looking for more mainstream manufactured paints that may not be ethically sourced and compare these instead of mass manufactured egg tempera paint, and compare it this way. That means I will need to first look into sourcing the materials so they arrive promptly, as well as editing my literature review, abstract, and content on my thesis to focus on this idea instead. If I have time, I may look into adding the pre prepared paint back into this project, but for now, I am thinking of scrapping this idea because I should not necessarily make things more difficult for myself. I have begun looking up pigments on amazon that were not historically made and been trying to find funding for this item as well. In addition, I have to also purchase more animal glue, as the one I have thawed from my freezer is not in a usable state, which I had hoped for.
For the experimentation portion, I am most concerned about infestation/mold growth for the paintings, as I don’t have enough context on how I will perform this. I am going to be researching within this week is typical bug infestation or bacteria growth that occurs in old tempera paintings, and reaching out to the biology department at RIT to see if they have a culture of said bacteria/mold, and would let me use a space in their lab to infect my painting samples in. I have to do this within the next week because I want to give them enough notice. If they say no, then I will have to reach out to neighboring schools, like MCC, Nazareth, Saint John Fisher, or other colleges that may have access and allow me entry into their lab. By doing so, this will help me ensure I have a contained environment to monitor progress. I think I will have to draft an outline for my specific experiment and give them a summary of what my research should entail in order to gain their approval, so this is something else I will work on in the upcoming week and a half. I am hoping to have a full course of action by this weekend, to send out by this Monday, and after hearing this response, I believe I will have more confidence in having one part of my experiment set. In general, this will also call for evaluation of my current timeline and revisions to make sure it fits whichever dates I give them, or they give me.
I believe that if I can sort out and finalize my materials list and get an order in, reevaluate the recreation reference, edit my timeline, draft and email and reach out to the biology department at RIT, and get a response, this will set me up for success within the content of my thesis, as it is primarily experiment based. Overall, while I know there is a lot of work to be done, I am very excited to see this project come to fruition, as I love my topic and want to push myself in this final work I will do as a senior. Thanks for reading, and stay tuned!
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