Our Story

In the beginning was the need...

I launched SpectraFix as a brand in 2009, two years after I began to add soft pastel to my huge 4'x 5' watercolor paintings. Framing something that large under glass was out of the question. I needed a fixative, but the popular fixative sprays were unbearably toxic to me. I recalled having seen a formula using milk casein in an old art materials book, so I dug it out and recreated it. For two years, I used it in my own studio, tweaking the recipe here and there until it was perfect. It worked so well, I kept saying to myself "Why doesn't anybody make this anymore?" I had studied science and chemistry in university, and had eventually switched to art school and then to computers and graphic design. Funny how those three threads have come together! Destiny, folks.

Since then, I've added beeswax and other natural substances to increase flexibility and maintain clarity and without introducing more toxins. I've always felt that I could not, in good conscience, add anything to compromise people's health, even if it made my task easier.

We operate as a family business out of a small gold rush town in Northern California, just outside Nevada City, and very near the Yuba River.

It feels very good to have modernized this ancient formula and to witness it being used in countless creative ways, by happy artists and craftspeople.

Even though our original finger pump sprayer occasionally spit spots, we decided not to use pressurized aerosol cans because the chemical propellants were sprayed out with the fixative, and ultimately right into your lungs. I waited for years before finding the refillable Flairosol sprayers, made in Holland, which rely solely on an ingenious mechanism to make a fine mist spray. They're not cheap, but we hope you appreciate our efforts to keep healthy!

Please leave us your thoughts and send us your questions!

with our warmest wishes
Della Heywood