Learning everything all over again--only different again, too...
1994, Royal Academy of Visual Art, the Hague, Netherlands: My first painting instructor showed up to my studio during the first week and told me to get rid of the acrylics. He pointed to a painting sitting drying under the table, and described the dullness; the surface quickly losing any and all beauty it might have possessed just minutes before. So I did, and have been bonded to a series of ever-more-ecologically-friendly oil paints and mediums ever since. I've used oils for nearly thirty years now, and I LOVE them. I love the smell, the feeling of them, the way they layer and all the ways I can scratch and draw through them. I grew up as a painter with oils... and in less than two weeks I'll be participating in a live painting event where oils are not an option (not allowed due to VOC's, and also because paintings must be dry and hung by morning!) So here I am teaching myself a new skill in a hurry!!! It turns out very little of my painting style and technique translat...