Glenstone maintains an active loan program, lending art to other museums so that it can been seen more widely by the public. This summer, visitors to the Orange County Museum of Art will have the opportunity to see works from Glenstone’s collection in Raymond Saunders: Flowers from a Black Garden, from June 26, 2026 to January 3, 2027. To celebrate the upcoming exhibition, Glenstone convened Alice Craigie, a paintings conservator serving as the Modern Painting Fellow at the National Gallery of Art, and Steven O’Banion, Glenstone’s Director of Conservation in a conversation about Saunders’ practice and the surprises hidden in artist’s multi-layered paintings.

GLENSTONE
Alice, we're very excited to talk to you today. Can you just tell us a little bit about yourself and your history as a conservator?

ALICE CRAIGIE
I'm the Modern Painting Fellow at the National Gallery of Art. I am in my fourth year now, and I exclusively treat modern and contemporary paintings. I initially came into conservation through studying fine art as a painter. Because I came in as a painter, and because I have a big passion for close-looking, I ended up falling in love with conservation. I did a four year BA in Fine Art after school, and then conservation training at the Courtauld for three years in London. And then I worked in a modern and contemporary private practice, Julia Nagle Conservation, in central London, followed by work at Tate. Following that, I came to the States and started work at the National Gallery of Art. It’s been a really exciting trajectory of working in a mix of private studios and world-class institutions and working with a whole host of amazing conservators along the way.

GLENSTONE 
Can you tell us a little bit about Raymond Saunders and his practice?

ALICE CRAIGIE
Yes, absolutely – he was born Pittsburgh in 1934. He studied at many different kinds of US training programs like the Carnegie Institute of Technology and in California, and also gained significant training in Europe, which seemed to play a really kind of pivotal role. He wound up living in California, which, when you read his writing, is partially because he really wanted to work somewhere that was warm. He spoke about going back and forth to New York because there were obviously art world hubs there, but really it didn't have the weather he wanted. So that's part of why he stayed based in Oakland.

He was also an educator for all his life, and he seemed to draw inspiration from the surrounding urban environment and things that he would see. At some point he transitioned from making more traditional work to things like Red Star, a painting of his that I worked on for the National Gallery. It’s stretched like a traditional canvas but it also has elements of assemblage. And even later, his work might be something that incorporates a paint can or a door that's leaning against a wall that becomes more of a sculptural piece in a way.

He was an amazing artist that I think didn't get the kind of credibility and visibility that he should have in his lifetime. Certainly, he’s an artist I didn't know of until I came to the National Gallery of Art. But he had a lot of lasting influence. Basquiat for instance was heavily inspired by him, and when you look at Basquiat’s work, you can really see that influence there.

GLENSTONE
You mentioned Red Star, which is a painting you've done some research on at the National Gallery of Art. Can you tell us about that project?

ALICE CRAIGIE
Red Star, from 1970, was one of the first paintings that I worked on when I arrived at the National Gallery. It was a straightforward conservation treatment, but then it became a passion project of mine. It’s such a layered piece that I was really drawn into looking at exactly how he might have made it. The initial treatment itself was just re-stretching the canvas onto a new stretcher—it had unfortunately been misaligned along the edges the last time it was re-stretched. So, I was putting it back onto a new stretcher and then consolidating the edges where they had been turned over, retouching some of those minor losses of paint.

It was a very minimal treatment, but it afforded me ti10Image 2-up (symmetric)addexpandmore-dots ImagesAttach images Anchor IDOptional. Use for direct linking (e.g., #section-name). Use lowercase letters, numbers, and hyphens only.me to research some of the mark making, and then I also utilized the fact that at the NGA we have the equipment to do X-rays and infrareds. I was lucky enough to work with our amazing technician Douglas Lachance to capture these.

Infrared images typically help us look at things that are maybe beneath the surface that might be carbon rich. We did infrared imaging and I was hoping to see obscured drawings, but I didn't necessarily know how much information I would see. Sometimes, you don't really know how synthetic or modern materials will present with these imaging techniques. But the infrared revealed information about the collage fragments that were at the bottom of the painting. And between a combination of what I could see on the surface and what I found in infrared, I was able to identify that one of those fragments was a West African banknote, which was really interesting. That was quite fun! When I look at the artwork now, it feels quite obvious because you can see part of the face in there and a little bit of a “100” in red. But all of those clues piece together with what you could see in the infrared.

There was also a fragment that had been ripped up and placed separately in the painting and in the infrared we noticed it had very legible text. It was backwards, I suppose it'd been placed facing toward the painting, and when I flipped it around, they stitched together. I really quickly found that it was for a Tissot watch advert from the late 60s. Through further sleuthing, I found I could work out what was on the front of the painting, and that was an image of a Romare Bearden collage! This was interesting because they had met—Bearden's obviously older than Saunders, and he's someone that Raymond Saunders would have looked up to and known as an artist. But that artwork, Bearden’s Soul Histories, is a piece that was made just the year before Red Star. So my theory is that it must have been reproduced in the New York Times magazine, and Saunders immediately I suppose, distressed and ripped up that fragment and incorporated it into his piece.

But I think it's a really fascinating thing with Saunders: he creates things, he wants these fragments to be there, but he also doesn't want them to be visible to everyone. He has the collage piece and the money there, but he also covered it up with this more opaque yellow paint, so you could only potentially find it. If you were looking there and maybe you were familiar with the money yourself, you might make that connection if it was personal to you. It's kind of like he wanted it there, but he didn't necessarily want it legible, which is interesting.

GLENSTONE
Steven, what can you tell us about the history of Saunders’ works in Glenstone's collections?

STEVEN O'BANION
At Glenstone, we're fortunate to be the stewards of six artworks by Raymond Saunders, five of which are kind of collage paintings and one—as Alice mentioned earlier—kind of crossing the border between painting, sculpture and installation. That’s Untitled from 1995. It’s actually a series of five doors that lean against a wall, and they have components collaged and on top of them, but also in listening to Alice talk about her research that she did at the NGA with Red Star, I saw a lot of parallels between that painting's history and its layered nature, and the painting Dr Jesus, which is from 1968 and 1986. Note the double dating there—it’s a painting originally from 1968 that was later reworked, and Red Star being from 1970, its origins are in of a similar period to Red Star.

So in the story of Dr Jesus—and fortunately we have Art Historian Dr. Richard Powell to thank for this documentation—the painting was originally done in 1968 and the canvas was horizontally oriented and it featured a depiction of Mickey Mouse and the words “God” and “good.” And it was, early in his career, one of Saunders’ most reproduced works. A number of institutions were trying to acquire it, including the Whitney and the Pennsylvania Academy. But Saunders kept it in his personal collection and, in 1986, he turned the painting on its side and totally repainted it. The new composition is largely pale green with cross iconography and some golden yellow hues. It mostly obscures the previous painting that is underneath it. Truly, the main hint that there is a painting underneath is if you look at the back of the artwork—you can see the original labels facing the other direction and then arrows indicating the new direction for the repainting. Saunders talked about this: he knew that that original painting was still there, so it's not a mistake. He knows it's there, so it is still there. That’s what I love about Alice’s work on Red Star – the use of irfrared radiography can penetrate those top layers of paints, and they found through analysis images that we wouldn't be able to see otherwise, and I think it'll be interesting as Raymond Saunders’ work continues into the future and is entering so many institutions collections. There are more hidden gems that we'll be able to keep discovering. In many ways, Alice, you’re laying a cornerstone and creating more art historical investigation on the work of somebody who did not get their dues in their lifetime.

ALICE CRAIGIE
Yes, absolutely!

GLENSTONE
What do you both hope people get out of seeing the show at the Orange County museum, as conservation professionals? Alice, especially as an expert who knows at least one painting perhaps deeper than many Saunders specialists working today, what are you hoping people take away?

ALICE CRAIGIE
It was such a privilege being able to spend so much time with Red Star. Even having spent all the time I have, I still see new things whenever I look at it again. What was amazing about seeing the show at the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh was just having so many of these works together. There are so many marks or images that recur over and over. For example, one of my favorite little features is that he often drew these little ‘dots’. They’re on so many different paintings, but they're abstracted to varied degrees and are depicted on Red Star, but we didn’t know what they were for a long time and our curator referred to them as “jelly beans”. And it wasn't until looking at other paintings where I think actually he'd just drawn that outline and then he'd written “dots, mom's favorite candy” that that's where I’d made the connection actually. So they are Dots, the candy. And then in another work, he's actually ripped the box of Dots up and included it. But I think there's so many common threads that do recur, and that's one of them. It’s a nod towards his mum. And I really love that. We can't know all of these symbols in his personal lexicon because he didn't tell us what they are, but I really hope that people can kind of find their own little connections just by going around the show.

GLENSTONE
Steven, is there anything that you want to add to that?

STEVEN O'BANION
Two things: I think it's wonderful that the retrospective started at the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh, where the artist grew up, and the second venue is going to be on the West Coast where he spent so much of his time. So it seems really appropriate for the artist to be celebrated at the Carnegie Museum and the Orange County Museum of Art. The second thing is that prior to the works entering Glenstone’s collection, the only place I ever got to see them was in art history textbooks. With an exhibition like this, you can see so much more than is ever reproducible in books. Like Alice talked about: you can see the outline of a bank note, you can start to decode the different materials that the artist was working with and how he manipulated them. And you only do that through spending time with the work and relating that to the meaning of his work. His materials aren't always immediately evident, and neither are his compositions. Sometimes he's working with symbols and you're looking at the piece and trying to figure out what those symbols may or may not have meant.

GLENSTONE
On a closing note: Do you have anything to say to folks considering conservation as a career path?

ALICE CRAIGIE
I think it's slightly different coming from coming from the UK to the United States. But I think just really, honestly, having a passion for the objects and for their care and future preservation is key. That must be kind of what's driving you more than anything else. You’ve got to really love the artwork.

GLENSTONE
Steven, anything from you?

STEVEN O'BANION
What I love is that conservation is a profession that floats between. It's a little bit of science, but it’s also a little bit of understanding people and what they were trying to make. If you don't really understand what the artist was trying to do, it's hard to preserve the artwork in the right way. So what I love about conservation is we get to work with experts in all different fields, art historians, scientists, material scientists and kind of pull all that knowledge to document and preserve artworks for future generations.

GLENSTONE  
Thank you both so much for your time!