Denis Gingras artiste artist ingénieur engineer professeur professor

Denis Gingras

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Artist - Painter Poet Professor Explorer Engineer Musician Writer Father

My interests for restoration

In recent years, I discovered a new passion: the

restoration of works of art and antiques. I started

collecting a few works that I found mostly in various flea

markets around Paris, during my travels, or in auctions of

Quebec Eastern Townships and Montérégie. As I can't

afford to pay very much for most of these objects, their

state are usually from average to very poor. I find my

pleasure not so much in the gesture of collecting them

per se, but rather in the restoration. Each antique has a

history and a long life that reminds people of the past

who was their owners. My pleasure is to breathe new life

into these works whose beauty is often veiled under the

dirt and the scars of time.

I do not consider myself as a highly trained professional

conservator. I am an amateur restorer and self-taught.

However, my scientific training and my long working

experience in optics, spectrometry, science materials,

mathematics etc, as well as my reading on the subject

and my 45 years of experience in the fine arts allow me

to, so I assume, to master relatively well the essentials

of the business. There are several "philosophy" or

"schools" in the field of restoration and conservation. As

with my own practive, I try to observe the four following

principles when I perform a restoration:

1) minimize the intervention while ensuring the

sustainability of the work;

2) restore the coherence and the lisibility of the work;

3) respect the passage of time on the artwork (natural

ageing) and its history;

4) insofar as possible, the intervention should be reversible.

Some examples of work that I have made in recent years can be found in the following

sections below. Each work to be restored is a whole new and rich experience.

Example of picture layers peeling off the canvas, French-Canadian oil painting, XIX century (details).

Need to restore a work of art ? Do not hesitate to contact me ! For some years now, I offer services in the restoration of works of art, be it work on papers, oil paintings, sculptures or antiques. Patience, passion, respect, efficiency and humility constitute key qualities for a good restorer. Humility because above all, one shall recognize his own limits and have access to proper tools and materials for a given job. A good restorer knows when to decline a restoration job when it exceeds his competencies or the capacity of his workshop. The worse nightmare for a restorer is to degrade further a work of art. Fortunately, this happened to me only very rarely. It is also essential to carefully evaluate the worth of a piece of art and to respect the budget and the level of foundness of the customer toward his work of art. This is why each restoration order is individually evaluated on a case by case basis. For each restoration, I open a file documenting all restoration steps in details and the state of the work of art before and after restoration. Before I start, the customer receive a quote providing a list of the main tasks to realize and an estimate of the time required to achieve them. After completion of the restoration, the customer receive a summary of the work executed. To obtain a free estimate and quote, just go to the contact-me web page. It will be a pleasure to discuss with you about your restoration need.