This painting suffered from scratches on the surface as well hair that had become somewhat troublesomely attached to the paint film due to hair products. Careful cleaning removed these impediments and conservation varnish preserved the surface and was also used to conceal the scratches.

Mike Morgan was born in Whangarei, New Zealand in 1952. He is one of New Zealand’s most iconic artists whose vibrant oil paintings are instantly recognizable for their immense detail, technical precision and humorous or satirical bent. People appear everywhere in his paintings and are usually depicted doing something rather strange, almost as if they were characters in a circus, thus adding to a surreal dimension. Rene Magritte and Salvador Dali are strong influences as well as artists much closer to home, Michael Smither and Brent Wong, being particularly influential during the 1960s and 1970s. His accomplished works are highly collectible as well as being, just like the man himself, so much fun.

A playful and gregarious character with an incredibly likeable personality, Mike is a well known and much respected artist who lived on Waiheke Island for many years and whom now resides in Waihi. His paintings frequently comment on the community with references to local activities, people and events. He has a particularly serious fondness for hotrods which often manifests itself in his art. As such many people will recognise his beloved hotrod called ‘Lucy’, named after the famous Beatles song Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, which appears in a significant number of paintings.

For many years Mike worked in the steel fixing industry but finally realised his dream of painting full time when he moved to Waiheke Island in 1991. He is a well established artist in New Zealand who has been consistently exhibiting for over twenty years and also exhibits regularly in New York where he is highly regarded. His paintings have an international audience including the famous band U2 who in 1989 bought five of his works, with one member of the band then commissioning another. His art is sought after by the corporate sector and is included in the collections of many corporate Head Offices in Wellington and Auckland.

This painting suffered from an old, discolored varnish, and a covering of dirt particulates. The corners had lost integrity of the paint film.

Cleaning was a little trickier than normal. We had to modify our solution to be gentle with the paint film, but still pick up the varnish and dirt particulates. The type of paint used was a casein variant. Consolidation returned the integrity at the corners.

Adolf Dehn (1895-1968) was born in Waterville, Minnesota. He began creating artwork at the age of 6. His student and early professional life began with a dedicated pursuit of black and white topics as a natural and expressive watercolorist. By 1920, after formal training as an illustrator and lithographer, he began to create ink drawings and lithographs, the sales of which supported him though the depression.

In the early 1920’s, Dehn moved to Europe, and developed his imagery of cabaret, park scenes, burlesque, and European landscapes of the roaring 20’s. He returned to the Midwest during the depression and by 1936 he started to work in the watercolor medium. He discovered a fondness for its characteristics of finish, fluidity, and adaptability for effects that could be either deliberate or spontaneous.

It seems watercolors also agreed with Dehn’s open, effusive, and passionate character. During the 30’s and 40’s, his favorite subjects were Midwest and Northeast farmscapes. His eventual home of New York City also became a frequent subject matter as he captured the essence of the city’s burlesque, Central Park, Harlem nightclubs, industrial yards, and areas of high society.

He died in New York City in May 1968, and left behind a vast body of lithographs, watercolors, drawings and prints, which are in the permanent collections of nearly 100 museums across the United States and Europe.

This Carl Hoerman (1885 – 1955) painting suffered from dirt contamination and a sizable scratch in the top-left. Once it was cleaned we noticed the area with the scratch had been over-scrubbed, resulting in paint loss. This was from someone’s prior attempt to repair the work. In-painting was carried out to conceal this area. While the painting isn’t dated, we noticed that the board it was painted on is rather old, and this leads us to believe that it is an early work by Hoerman.

Hoerman and his wife, Christiana, who was also an artist, took a trip to Pike’s Peak in 1926. By the following year, Hoerman had started to paint desert scenes. During the 1930s, the couple would spend their winters in southern California, escaping those of the Saugatuck, Michigan area.