What is your worst Art Disaster?

[Cremnitz]

My two worst disasters were caused by gallery people. They were both encaustic paintings on cradled birch panels with no frames around them. One of them, a tiny 5x7 inch piece, suffered a big dent on one coiner that was not repairable. It was one of my favorite paintings, so it is now in my "Permanent Collection"! The gallery who wrecked this one, with which I no longer do business, would not take any responsibility for it. Another one that was 36x48 inches, was taken out of a different gallery without my OK and displayed at another location. It fell off their rickety display and landed on a sculpture which poked a hole all the way through the birch paneling. This gallery which I also no longer work with, took no responsibility for what happened and sheepishly pointed at our contract where it says I had to insure my own pieces. Obviously, I could have sued them for negligence and likely won, despite their insurance clause, but chose not to. Fortunately on this painting due to the nature of the materials, it was a pretty easy fix. I glued a piece of birch paneling fitted perfectly into the opening on the back side and just worked a bit of fresh encaustic paint/wax into the damaged area. The repair on the front was undetectable and will last for many centuries if the painting is well cared for. If you looked closely on the back you might notice that the section in the cradling where the repair was done, is thicker than the others. Other than that it was invisible.

Encaustics are the easiest medium I have ever used when it comes to fixing damage unless it is on the edge or corner of an unframed, cradled panel. If an edge or corner is damaged on a cradled birch panel, the only relatively easy fix that can hide the damage, requires a frame with a deep rabbet. I have dropped a few framed pieces myself but the paintings were not damaged. Fortunately all unframed pieces dropped by me, ended up with no unfixable damage to the painting.

 

[snoball]

I guess my worst disaster was a china painted plate. It was a small plate, painted with blackberries, leaves and blossoms, I was very proud of it.I had done a good job on it and was giving it its final sanding and dropped it and shattered it into a hundred pieces.

 

[Hostajunkie]

Yikes, Cremnitz, what those galleries did was pretty outrageous! Here, the galleries are insured and pieces are handled with reverence!

snoball, that is such a shame!

The only disaster that I can think of is one Xmas many years ago…. My sister had moved many states away and missed her old house here. I decided (why, I don’t know) to do a large embroidery / sampler of her old house. It was only half done, but they were home for xmas, so I showed it to them. The next thing I knew, it was covered with splashes of red wine. That ended that. Lol!

 

[Artyczar]

These are very sad stories. I have many and wouldn't know where to start. I've had work damaged and stolen, some by galleries, some by people, some through shipping, many different scenarios. I had two different galleries steal my work, along with all the other artists in the gallery, by closing up and moving in the dark of night never to be heard from again. I once had a gallery destroy two pieces during one show, but they were both insured, so that situation was a better outcome. Once gallery shipped back a piece without following the packaging instructions, so it came back in a thousand little pieces and no longer exists. I've had coffee houses tell me that people have stolen my work off the walls when no one was looking. I've received work back with knife slashes through the piece. Dirty and scratched pieces, pieces that were never paid for...you name it. Thirty-five years of many disasters. Ha!

 

[Cremnitz]

After reading Artyczar's post I feel like I have been lucky. I can't think of a single time when anything of mine was lost, stolen, damaged beyond repair or completely destroyed. I haven't shipped very many paintings though. I tend to enter shows and seek out galleries that are within driving distance for me, or enter digital submission venues that don't require the actual painting in their hands. When I do ship, I use the MasterPak boxes and have never had even the box damaged so far.

Sad tales from snobal and Hostajunkie!

A sad stitchery tale to share - My grandmother loved to do needlepoint and created some kind of furniture related needlepoint work such as a chair or footstool, for all of her kids and grandkids in her later years. She was getting to the age where she would not be able to keep doing any and had done an elaborate chair for my mom with needlepoint arm rests, seat and back. I think it took her several years to finish it. She took the work in to a furniture shop to have them attach them to an expensive chair that had been chosen. Someone at the shop stole the chair. They never did find out who did it. Their insurance paid someone many thousands of dollars to hand stitch the entire piece over to replace it, but I remember that the replacement only had sadness tied to it for my mom and her mom. The one positive thing that my grandmother took away from it was that she learned the huge monetary value of her work.

 

[Bartc]

Wow! You folks have really taken a beating.

Ayin, you are a study in perseverance. Each revelation about your journey leaves me in awe that you kept at it to make it work for you.
My tales are really trivial by comparison.

In one case I had painted reasonably well a light house in Monterey in acrylic. Stepped back 10' to check it out and a massive wind gust blew my entire easel 10' in the opposite direction, splashing the cleaning water (loaded with acrylic pigment) over the painting. Dried almost immediately and with a white film over the painting, I had to repaint the whole thing.

Second case was a lovely scenic of a Tuscan like vista in acrylic. Took it home and decided to use acrylic medium to varnish it, something I almost never bother doing. But didn't realize that my wife had used the brush I picked up for something else and it wasn't as clean as it looked. The entire painting was covered in a dirty light green film! Didn't realize it at first because acrylic medium starts out milky white, but as it dried I was appalled. Had to paint over that one again too.

 

[Artyczar]

Thank you Bart. That is quite a lovely compliment. I'm so sorry to hear of you having to repaint that piece.

It reminds me of one of my "collectors from hell" when he made me repaint something he purchased because he didn't like where some parts of the oil paint shining. I should had told him "no" but he was convinced that it was not the paint. He kept saying it was the plastic covering it was wrapped in that melted into the painting from heat. He was incorrect, but I tried to touch it up anyway and wound up repainting the entire thing. I didn't like it as much anymore, but there was nothing I could do about it at that point and I was trying to make him happy...

But there was never a way to make that guy happy. He constantly had issues with the pieces he bought and often wanted to exchange them. He would also show up at my house to make payments and not mail them to me like I'd asked. He'd say inappropriate things to me too. I finally had to completely cut him out of my life because of this boundary issue.

 

[Hostajunkie]

Yikes — These are horrible incidents! Stolen pieces, wind causing damage, contaminated brushes, and a collector from hell. Ugh! I haven’t exhibited since just before the COVID shutdowns and I think I’ll leave it that way. Lol!

 

[Artyczar]

Oh, that is not the REAL collector from hell. I have another from way back that nearly ruined my life. That one lifted me up and then utterly crushed me in the end. I think I have told the story here before. At least some of it. And it happened during the worst year of my life--the year I lost both my parents. I nearly quit painting. He was the worst of the worst.

He dropped a huge amount of money on many of my paintings in the course of a year and praised me like I was a rising star. Filled with constant compliments and wanting to invest in my career. I thought I'd found THE patron of my life. He talked a lot about more and more opportunities for me, like me being a consultant for a big documentary he was working on, and an art foundation he was starting to help artists in need. He wanted me to be on the board for this. He was also starting a record company that he wanted me to partner in--all kinds of shit. Well, it was all bullshit and he was really spending money of an aging actress who he was caring for. He originally came to me buying pieces for her collection, then for his private collection, and so it all went.

Then, he offered to fund my studio practice, but made stipulations to be able to use the space once a month for himself. It sounded fishy, so I had to say no to that and ask why, etc. He said he wanted to be around me more. What? Why? Because he really wanted to me to "run away with him" and when I let him down regarding this, he became the meanest, most cruel person I had ever come to know telling me I was never going to amount to anything and said I had TRICKED him into buying my art! (Even though he made his original purchases online without any communication with me! He hadn't even met me yet.)

Then he sold all my work on eBay for a fraction of what he paid out of spite. He continued to harass me, phone messages and emails about what a loser I was. I went into a depression for about a year. He knew exactly what buttons to push I guess--all my insecurities.

After the actress died, he went into bankruptcy and tried to apologize and tried to return the last painting he had of mine, but I never took his calls and never responded to him. This was back in 2010. What a shit show it was.

 

[Enyaw]

Not that I can't sing the blues as life has it's share of discontents. Being as I don't like to sing the blues I'll just say that I would like to think it's the last piece I made as with that thought; they can only get better .. and the beat goes on ...

 

[Marc]

Can't match the horrors Ayin has had, but I once took a painting to get framed at the most well known framer and art restorer in the city. It was a small work in spikey impasto. Well they broke all the spikey parts off, there was no way to fix that and they wouldn't even discount the framing charge. Never used them again, but I later heard other bad tales of them. The worst actually reached the newspapers.
A old lady had her picture cleaned and wasn't sure of the result, but thought, guess that's the way it looks. However when her daughter visited and saw the old landscape over the chimney piece she said; "Where are the cows!" "Mum, there were cows in the background!" "Where are they!"
Gallery: "Oh, terribly sorry they must have been over painted." "Give it back and we'll remove the overpaint."
Lady's daughter: "Those aren't the same cows! They're not even in the same part of the picture!!!"
Turns out they were trying to cover up an terrible over cleaning. They weren't using correct practices. Other horror stories came to light and they were thrown out of the international restorers guild. Then they turned to largely only selling living artists works. Artists weren't getting their money from sales. Legal action of a forgery bought. Oh dear; gallery almost as old as the city itself closes forever.

 

[Hermes2020]

Hearing these stories makes me grateful, once again, that I am just a dabbler in art. Not that I can't tell you horror stories, but they all played out in my professional career, outside the art world.

 

[john]

Holy crap Ayin! You've had more than your fair share of problems. I hope you can leave it behind you and look forward. Being new years we should all do that I guess.

All this talk is making me a little nervous. I'm just starting to get my art out there.

My worst disaster is due to me throwing away some paintings. I guess I threw them away, I don't even remember. They were nice ones of bamboo. I've showed them here. All I know is that they are no longer around. Sometimes I get hyper critical and annoyed at some stupid little thing and think throwing it out will solve something. So if I can just protect myself from myself.....

 

[Artyczar]

John, don't throw anything out. I mean, that's just my advice. Or, at least it's good that you've documented them first, right? You can always learn from your past work, and also, there is a painting (work) for everyone's taste, even if you don't like it. I have found that this is so true. My favorites are never others' favorites.

My last blog post is about documenting by the way.

Also, don't be nervous about horror stories. I feel like I was too naive in every one of these scenarios. If I was armed with more knowledge beforehand, most of those things wouldn't have happened. Especially that worst case scenario with that collector. I should have never told him anything personal about me. Not one thing. Then he couldn't have hurt me as much. I shouldn't have believed his lies, or rather, gone with my gut instinct, because I knew something was fishy about him.

With shipping, I should have insured my work for more.

With the coffee houses, there wasn't much I could have done about it, and with the galleries that took off, I should have found out more info about the people that started the gallery. They weren't reputable enough.

And, etc. Always get things in writing as well. Do more research. There's a lot more protection I could have done.

But YES! Here's to a better future.