What Restoration Artists and Soil Scientists Share — Returning Something to What It Should Have Been

Both the restoration of artists’ works from previous centuries and the effort to restore soil degraded by farming share a common goal. Both efforts seek to return something to its original state and to restore something that was previously altered by human activity.

In the same way that a painting restorer is seeking to uncover the elements that existed within the artwork before it was damaged, time has obscured those elements. The goal of the restoration is to gain an understanding of how those elements existed originally within the artwork, which materials were used in the creation of that artwork, how those materials have altered over time, and the steps required to restore the painting to its original state. The intent of the painting restorer is not to create a better painting than was created originally but to restore the painting to its original form.

Soil remediation does exactly this but at a different scale and with different tools. For Soil Remediation, visit soilfix.co.uk/services/soil-remediation

Contaminated land is not a site that needs to be made better than it was created. Contaminated land is a site that needs to be returned to what it originally was before industrial activities and practices contributed to its contamination. The remediation engineer is trying to return the contaminated land to its original state, similar to how a painting restorer attempts to restore the painting to the artist’s original intention.

Both remediation design and painting restoration both require a thorough understanding of the condition of the materials to be treated before any work is performed upon those items. The restorer must be able to identify original painting versus painted-on elements, damage to the painting versus patination of the painting, as well as elements to remove versus elements to preserve. The remediation engineer must know the nature, location, and behaviour of the contaminant that must be removed from the structure before performing any remediation efforts.