Nathan Bennett Openings New Works:
Patina Paintings on Bronze at Meyer East Gallery
6/12/09
There’s no one else doing what Nathan Bennett’s
doing, and that’s just how he likes it. He works
much like the medieval alchemist—making beauty out
of average metals. Neither a sculptor nor a painter
per se, Bennett’s a patineur—a master in the art of
bronze coloration. His paintings are created through
patination—a painstaking process of applying various
combinations of heated chemicals onto a
one-eighth-inch-thick sheet of silica bronze.
Patina, the oxidization of metals that commonly
shows up as the greenish color on public statues and
outdoor sculptures, is often the first thing the
experts on Antiques Roadshow look for in order to
gauge the age and value of an object.
Additional Images from Show
Patina seized hold of Bennett’s imagination in 1989
while apprenticing as a patineur at the Wasatch
Foundry in his home state of Utah. “I was spraying a
bronze base with sulfur, going up from the bottom,
when I noticed that the top was bright and the
bottom was dark,” recalls Bennett, now a master
patineur and owner of his own Provo-based patina
business. Until that fateful moment at the foundry,
however, Bennett had been searching for a way to
make his mark as an artist—though not as something
as run-of-the-mill as an illustrator. “It looked
like a landscape. That’s when a light bulb went off.
So I’d come in to the foundry on my breaks and I
tried to do the same image I’d seen on that
sculpture, only now using patina.”
That first image was of a snow-covered and
tree-filled mountain. One day his boss asked what he
was doing. Bennett said, I’m patina painting. His
boss replied, That’s a really good idea. But because
of the secretiveness of the patineur profession,
Bennett honed his newfound art, and his style, on
the down-low. “I had to keep it very low-key,” he
admits. The millennia-old legacy of patineurs is one
of fathers passing on their knowledge to their sons,
of aspiring patineurs serving a minimum seven-year
apprenticeship, and of patineurs never divulging
their chemical-color compounds to anyone—all of
which Bennett happily adheres to, “It’s nice to keep
it a secret sometimes,” he says with glee.
Today, we define a patina as “any intentional
coloration placed on the surface of metal or wood
whose sole purpose is to enhance and/or bring
attention to these surfaces.” The creation of
patinas basically involves the use of metallic salts
suspended in acidic solutions, which are applied to
the surface of the bronze, thus achieving
coloration. This application usually incorporates
the use of heat, which helps the chemical reaction
on the surface of bronze, and therefore aids in the
production of these unique colors and patterns.
Commercial pigments are sometimes added to the
patina to help warm or cool a color as desired.
Because these patinas are usually quite fragile to
the touch, and applied to metals that are easily
oxidized when exposed to the atmosphere, they must
be sealed with lacquers and/or waxes in order to
retain their unique coloration.
Originally, patinas were thought of as “the
coloration of metal and or wood brought about by the
oxidation of surfaces, caused by extended exposure
to its immediate atmosphere.” Bronze, being
primarily made of copper, tended to oxidize or
tarnish rather easily, allowing objects in cast
bronze to take on different appearances as time
passed. A deeper corrosive action occurred on bronze
objects that were laid in ancient burial tombs, due
to high acidic atmospheres or alkaline soils, which
came in contact with the surfaces of metal objects.
This exposure over time gave bronze surfaces crusty
green and blue coatings, which today are regarded as
quite valuable in the art world, as well as in the
field of science. These pieces of antiquity took on
what are considered “natural patinas.” For centuries
during the Roman Empire, people tried to
artificially color bronze objects to resemble the
green/blue effects of this natural patina.
It wasn’t until the emergence of the alchemist in
the Middle and Dark Ages that we find a new spark of
interest in the coloration of metal. This interest
was based on the attempt to change base metals into
gold or have the surface coloration resemble the
aesthetics of gold.
During this time, and continuing into the European
Renaissance, the true blossoming of bronze
patination came into its own in the Western World,
especially as an art form. Not only were patineurs
achieving the effects of natural patinas, but they
were also creating new and more lasting effects by
introducing new innovations such as and oil sealers,
used to prolong the effects of patination on the
surfaces of bronzes sculpture. Waxing bronze
surfaces to seal and protect the patinas was all
that was needed at the time, as alloys didn’t
usually have the high concentrations of copper, and
there was no better choice of sealant than wax for
protection against the atmosphere.
Today, however, we in the Western world are
producing bronze sculpture cast from silicon bronze,
which is quite high in copper content. As a result
of this high copper ratio, patinas on sculpture cast
from silicon bronze tend to change more readily,
darkening and subduing brighter colors and
patterns. Almost all bronze darkens as it ages;
patinas tend to mellow with age, which is caused by
chemical reactions finding a balance on the
surface. This natural occurrence whereby the copper
content in the bronze oxidizes, giving dark black
colorations, is only one of the many mellowing
procedures.
Where other artists paint in oils, acrylics, or
watercolors, Bennett works in solutions of copper
nitrate, titanium dioxide, and potassium sulfide,
compounds that sound like they came straight from an
alchemist's cabinet. "It is alchemy," declares
Bennett, who is now in the process of taking his
magic one step further by developing a process to
make prints on metal that maintain the visual
integrity of his much-in-demand original patina
paintings. Through 6-26-09
