My first painting, “Over the Fireplace” got damaged inadvertently! It was a bit of a psychic blow, but I realized I should make a new painting out of it. I watched videos on how to repair a torn canvas and carefully gessoed a patch of canvas to the back of it.

The Japanese idea of Kintsugi (金継ぎ, “golden joinery”), also known as kintsukuroi (金繕い, “golden repair”) is an idea that’s really taken hold on Facebook, used to make all kinds of inspirational posts about repairing broken crockery with gold. Here, I just used gold paint slathered over the canvas to cover the tears and and add new elements to the painting.

My original idea had been to make the repairs red bloody gashes to look more like a wound in the painting. The Kintsugi idea was a positive spin on the idea but I added some red slashes (hence the bloodiness) to reflect the pain that still remains after repair.

I regret not taking some process photos on this one!