Support: The support is a 1 x 1 twill-weave, processed, linen canvas stretched over an "American Type," double-bevel-faced, miter-cut ended, mortise-and-tenon joined, keyable softwood, commercial stretcher bar, pre-cut to the whole inch, 1 ¾" wide x ¾" thick in 40" and 30" sized lengths. The canvas is stretched with the warps in the horizontal position and tacked using blued steel tacks spaced evenly apart, 2" to 3" with regularity. The canvas has 44 warp threads per inch and 50 weft (twill weave) threads per inch. Eight custom basswood keys are secured at the corners.

Ground or Support Preparation: The processed linen canvas has a commercially applied primer consisting of 2PbCO3•Pb(OH)2 and some CaCO3 in oil, characterized using x-ray fluorescence spectroscopy at 15kV and 40kV and 28.8 and 3.8 µA under full vacuum.

Design Layers: The paints are applied generally as matte cream and paste consistencies, retaining both linear brushwork in dark values and short, scrubbing brushwork in brighter, background areas where thickly-textured paints obscure the twill pattern below. The paints have been applied over charcoal/graphite line underdrawing in single layers using the canvas primer as a reflective surface. O'Keeffe applied paint at the margins of forms using nearly continuous, curvilinear brush strokes with the brush positioned at an angle low to the canvas, resulting in a continuous, raised ridge of paint at the edge of each form. Surrounding brushwork is generally parallel to the linear directions defined by these edges, with no underlying or subsequent brushwork moving perpendicular to the linear form. Frequently, adjacent forms do not overlap, and the artist has chosen to allow a "holiday" of unpainted, primed canvas to be a visible detail in the composition, with graphite underdrawing residues sometimes visible. The artist achieves changes in value and hue using abutted, stepped transitions of paint applied wet-into-dry with a minimum of blending in some darker values in the tree-trunk figure.

Surface Coating: The work appears to be unvarnished.

XRF: Primer: lead carbonate, calcium carbonate.  

Lavender, upper left: iron (red ochre), Cobalt blue, lead, aluminum, silicon, no arsenic, no zinc.

Bright white, upper left: lead white.

Green, upper left corner next to white: chrome (viridian green), lead white, tiny bit of zinc white.

Dark red sliver below lavender, upper left: calcium carbonate, iron (red ochre).

Brown in trunk, middle: yellow ochre, lead white, no zinc.

Gray trunk: lamp black, lead white.

Dark black at base of fork: phosphorus, calcium (bone black), Cobalt, iron, lead white, no zinc.

Yellowish green flowers in chamisa, lower right corner: chrome viridian green, cadmium yellow, zinc white.

Light red at V in the main trunk: lead white, no zinc, red ochre.

Notes: No cracks, in very good condition.

Framing, Backing, and Hanging Hardware: The work is installed in a micro-environmentally controlled Georgia O'Keeffe/George Of-designed, "clam shell" profile, metal leaf frame with a gasketed secondary backing, basswood strainer, and gasketed Optium glazing and Rhapid gel RH buffering sheets behind Tyvek dust covers in the secondary backing strainer and activated charcoal-zeolite corrugated board VOC scavenger. The work is glazed with non-reflective, conductive Optium acrylic glazing.

All paints and structures are secure and stable. The work is moderately taut and planar, with the exception of very slight, nearly continuous stretcher-bar creases and tacking edge cusps along all four sides. There is a series of glossy drip-shaped saturations near the bottom of the tree-trunk figure and a series of slightly burnished abrasions scattered in the viewer's lower left corner of the foreground.

Darker-value paints in the tree-trunk forms may be exhibiting a slight blanched opacity caused by migration of mobile phase aluminum distearate dispersing agents migrating to the surface as a result of elevated temperatures previously experienced in transit.

The edges of forms are often defined by raised linear brushwork at the margins of the forms. These sometimes fracture and flake as a result of canvas deflection/excursion in transit. The work is clean and free of dust. All accretions have been previously removed. Brush-hairs, dried pallet bits, and other studio inclusions are occasionally visible in the design surface but should not be confused with damage or deterioration.

The work has developed a broad, generalized distribution of very fine basic lead carbonate (2PbCO3·Pb(OH)2) micro-protrusions that appear under some magnification as small granular surface inclusions in the paints. They are visible in the primed canvas along the tacking edge where there is no paint. They are more numerous and larger in Pb and Fe-containing paints. The work has been framed in a sealed, gasketed, and RH-buffered framing, glazing, and backing system to help prevent moisture migration through the canvas and activation-migration of the soap granules toward the design surface.