Blog Week: Paint

I save every squished tube and cap.  I’ve been tossing the tubes in these two glass jars for well over ten years and they still aren’t full.  I don’t understand it.

I started painting in watercolor when I saw an ad in the newspaper for a watercolor class.  I signed up for a ten week course and kept painting for two and a half years.  Frustrated with my lack of time to paint, I quit for a year or so but came back with renewed determination.  I have never considered stopping again.  NOT painting is not an option.   

I continued with watercolor for at least 20 years.  Why so long?  Because it took me that long to figure it out!  I could do an acceptable painting within a few years and I was selling work within two or three years at student prices — but my expectations kept changing.  I was pushing the paint to achieve more saturation and strength while still using the transparency to my advantage.  I was also learning about composition, color, design, and maturing as a creative person.  I feel like I was learning so much about painting that it was best to stay with one medium so I could focus on the overall knowledge without dealing with new specific technical challenges.

Another factor was my commitment to art fairs, exhibitions, and galleries.  An artist juries in with specific images — so we’re limited to the medium, subject, and style that we’ve presented.  Fairs are juried many months in advance and gallery shows are often booked a year or two in advance.  As my husband has always said, it is safer and less stressful to “fill one bucket”.  If I stick to one medium and it satisfies all my commitments then I’m more likely to be ready when the deadlines hit.

A few years ago, I slowed the art fair pace slightly and was determined to stretch my skills a bit.  There were also subjects I wanted to try that wouldn’t be as successful in watercolor.  I started experimenting with gouache, an opaque watercolor.  I enjoyed it but wasn’t totally satisfied with the paint quality.  I bought a few tubes of casein, read an article on it, and started a hair pulling struggle.

Casein is a water based paint but is applied very differently than watercolor.  It was a challenge and that is putting it mildly.  Doing anything new would have been difficult for me but casein is tricky and that intrigued me.  Unlike watercolor, there wasn’t a lot of information available about supports, grounds, or the paint.  There also were very few workshops or teachers so I was free to limp along without onlookers or expectations (imagined ones, really).  I guess that was good.

In the beginning I worked at my watercolor table as usual then would spin around to a small casein table and dabble for an hour or two.  I eventually split my time by working a few months in casein and then would return to watercolor for a few.  I did an art fair or two and a few gallery shows with caseins and began to feel more confident with it.  I still have a lot to learn but I achieved the goal — to use the painting skills I had learned while watercolor painting in a new medium.

I’ve been curious about encaustic ever since I saw Jasper John’s work in a New York museum many years ago.  I made the mistake of buying a book more recently and when I started highlighting….well, I knew I was in trouble.  Really, I should have continued with casein for a couple more years and built a stronger body of work but I was fascinated.  I continued my watercolor and casein work during the day at my regular pace and began experimenting with encaustic at night.  Now, about three years later, I’m working in encaustic full time.  I’ll return to watercolor and casein eventually — right now, I need to focus so I can make progress with the wax.  Part time with a medium works for a while but I tend to reach a point when I need to make progress so I won’t get discouraged.  

The small encaustics above are actually built on fragments of watercolor paintings.  I’m learning each new medium teaches me skills that affect everything else I do — sometimes in positive ways but not always — more tools in the tool belt has to be good in the long run so I try to focus on the big picture.