In my life as a painter, I haven’t been dedicated to using a particular type of paint. Instead, I’ve gone through phases in which I’ve painted with oils or with acrylics. Both have interesting characteristics and depending on the work I’m doing, I’m comfortable with either. It’s been a while since I’ve worked with oil paint, but this afternoon I pulled out my boxes of oils, my turps, my stand oil, my alkyd medium and my cold wax medium.

Compared to oils, acrylic is a devil may care medium. Brush it on; pour it on; slop it on – incredibly forgiving. It sticks very well. It can be thinned with water or with various kinds of goop. It dries fast, and it’s almost indestructable.

Oil paints on the other hand, are far less forgiving. To start with, if you’re not careful your paint will crack. Admittedly, sometimes, I’ve wanted my paint to crack, but it’s good to be in control of what’s happening. Every oil painter knows the phrase, “never lean on fat” It means that if you put oil paint thinned with turpentine on top of oil paint thinned with oil, it will crack 100% of the time.

Oil paint also offers a fantastic variety of textures. It takes some time to dry, and some colours take longer than others. At different points in the drying process, the paint has different characteristics, and you can take advantage of that. It also offers up the greatest variety of surface quality, and it doesn’t look like plastic.

I’ve started a new series of paintings, and as usual, I don’t know where they will take me. I was talking about this the other day with my friend CB, who shares some ideas about this approach. Actually, I really admire painters who conceive of their paintings as a completed vision, then execute them. This is something I never do. In fact, sometimes, I look at paintings I made years ago and think, how did I make that painting, how did I get there. When I’m working on new paintings, I’m well tuned to the history of each painting, the problems, the inventions, digressions, the dead-end ideas, great moves that I’ve killed off because as good as they are, they’re bad for the painting. Later, years later, when I look at a painting, I no longer see the story, just the painting.

When I pulled out my boxes of oil paint, I was pleased to see I had plenty of white and black and a good selection of colours, at least enough to get me going. Some of the lids on the tubes seemed to be fused on, but vice-grips helped with that.  Other than that, these paints are all in good shape, even though I haven’t used them in some time. I have just enough turps to keep my brushes clean until I get a new tin.

Time will tell what will come out of this new adventure in the studio. I haven’t shown my paintings in a while now, although I have enough unshown work to put on a large exhibition. One of these days, maybe I’ll cobble together an exhibition somewhere or another. In the meantime, I feel some painting coming on….