My journey began in 1995. Art class introduced us to painting. We used the washable poster paints, which were tempera, and we also used the permanent acrylics. The main difference was poster paints could be washed down the sink indefinitely, and acrylics would clog it up faster that you could blink! My fellow classmates were quite wasteful of the product, and we used up the supplies faster than my teacher had anticipated. She was forced to lecture us on the finer points of saving paint by only taking what you need. Some of us heeded her warnings, others did not. Often we were lectured about cleaning our materials, our brushes, our dishes that we used during our painting exercises, but to no avail. Some people just didn’t listen.
I decided to try my hand at painting with tempera paints. If I got anything on my clothes, they could be cleaned in the washing machine. If any paint dripped on the floor, it was easily cleaned up with a little water. I produced a few paintings with this medium, and realized something: the colors didn’t look real, and the paint flaked off or cracked. To test this theory out, I painted on multiple surfaces, including cardboard (flaked), poster-board (lacked realism), and canvas (cracked). I came to the conclusion in 1997 that I should let painting go for a while, and I set my brushes down.
Three years later, in the year 2000, I changed my major from music to Art. In order to fulfill the requirements of the degree, I had to take a class called ‘Introduction to Art’, which required me to purchase Utrecht® Brand acrylic paint. The difference between the paint that I had been exposed to in high school and the paint I was required to use in college was like night and day. The Utrecht® brand had the consistency of toothpaste and are in metal tubes, where the acrylics I had used in high school were runny and in 20 oz bottles. After experimenting with them that semester, I decided that every painting painted thus forth would be with Utrecht® Brand paint and no other!
I set to work on painting. I first to paint on paper, coming to the conclusion that painting on canvas was too expensive. (I found out later that it really isn’t.) I discovered that painting on paper, while convenient, posed a problem: the paper curled when it dried. I also discovered that after each painting was done, it had to be framed in order to hang on the wall.
Sometime in 2003 or 2004, I came to the conclusion, after painting many paintings on paper, that canvas was the only way to go. (I believe it was prompted by the fact that I tried mounting paper on foam core and it didn’t turn out well.) I bought five canvases, pre-gessoed and pre-stretched and began working on my series of multiple figures. After a semester of being told that they didn’t look real, I decided to concentrate on that very issue, studying my subjects and trying to make my paintings look real. I finally accomplished that in 2005, and then lost the will to paint!
A life-changing event caused me to pick-up my brushes a year later, and my journey of painting realism continues!
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