Lovely Alizarin, what are you using for a replacement?

[Marvin Mattelson]

Originally Posted by Richard Bingham

Marvin, I'm sorry to read in a touch of annoyance and contentiousness in your reply... I respect your work, and would admire the chance to buy you a beer.

Ouch! And yet you'd still be willing to buy me a beer? Maybe I should bring a taster along; perhaps Sharon will volunteer? I've actually been told I'm vaguely charming in person. (Perhaps one of my students can chime in here.) Yet somehow my affability doesn't seen to translate well in the written word. Perception vs reality?

My philosophy regarding materials is really quite simple, I try to use things that have a proved track record. The painting process, as originally developed, was integral, producing archivally sound results. Whether it was simply intuition, or a profound wisdom that we are incapable of recreating through our obsessive technological measurements, their methodologies worked.

According to scientific analysis, bumble bees can't fly. I believe we are far better off spending our time developing our knowledge and skills as well as our intuition. Look inward for the truth. What differentiated the greatest artists was their knowledge and skill, not alchemy.

[Richard Bingham]

Originally Posted by Marvin Mattelson

. . . you'd still be willing to buy me a beer? . . . . somehow my affability doesn't seen to translate well in the written word.

Heck yes! It would be my privilege. (No taster needed!) It's never been my intent to make anyone sore! And it can be tough communicating this way, without eye contact, inflection or body language to underscore what friendly guys we really are.

Originally Posted by Marvin Mattelson

My philosophy regarding materials is really quite simple, I try to use things that have a proven track record. The painting process, as originally developed, was integral, producing archivally sound results. Whether it was simply intuition . . .

I think that philosophy is square on the mark, and I have a feeling the development of the painting process was based on exactly the same kind of pragmatic approach. Painting all manner of items was a pretty ancient practice by the time it was "new" to easel painting . . . over 500 years ago.

[Sharon Knettell]

I do think people underestimate the amount of information a serious artist needs.

This discussion belies the notion that an artist is someone who simply picks up a brush, any brush, and daubs some paint, any paint on a surface, any surface. There are those of course who do this because they feel that knowledge is an impediment to artistic freedom.

Thank-you both for engaging in this very enlightening thread. It has helped me a lot!

No I WILL NOT taste test flax-seed oil-yeesh!

[Richard Bingham]

Originally Posted by Sharon Knettell

. . . someone who simply picks up a brush, any brush, and daubs some paint, any paint on a surface, any surface. There are those of course who do this

A fair number of people doing very fine work do this, largely because instruction on the mechanical aspects of proper materials and methods of applying paint has been neglected if not abandoned outright for decades.

Originally Posted by Marvin Mattelson

. . . people are better served by . . . focusing on developing their drawing and painting skills.

That's certainly true. My apologia for delving into the wherefore of materials is that we can't always be at the easel . . . it's a perverse "hobby", rather like the mason making bricks in his spare time.

Originally Posted by Sharon Knettell

No I WILL NOT taste test flax-seed oil-yeesh!

I think Marvin was worried I'd poison his beer . . .

[Sharon Knettell]

Marvin,

With all due respect to the test of ages vis-a-vis materials I do think that there should be some contemporary indepedent testing done.

I think we have sometimes an emotional attachment to methods and materials, rather than one that is reflected in good research.

Tested to death, why they have not even been tested at all in relationship to contemporary use. I know it is not romantic, but I for one would like to know more. I thank Richard for his contribution as well as yours. Both of you are very knowlegeable artists.

[Thomasin Dewhurst]

Originally Posted by Sharon Knettell

I do think people underestimate the amount of information a serious artist needs.

This discussion belies the notion that an artist is someone who simply picks up a brush, any brush, and daubs some paint, any paint on a surface, any surface. There are those of course who do this because they feel that knowledge is an impediment to artistic freedom.

I think gaining information about the longevity of art products is only valid in relation to the interest the artist has in it. Too much concern about artwork conservation on the part of the artist can, in some cases, inhibit the artist.

I don't endorse painting with and on just anything, but going too far in the other direction can colour your thinking when you are actually painting the painting, I am sure. And worrying about getting an equivalent for a colour that has gone out of existence or is transient can be an obstacle to really seeing what's going on in the painting before you.

What I mean here is that if you couldn't get find perfect cadmium orange, for example, and instead took a colour that was "near enough" you might find that the subtle difference may open up new paths that sweep you to greater heights than you ever expected. I know I am just a young unknown, and, after this post, I suppose a young upstart, but my best and most exciting discoveries happened when, for instance, I hadn't primed properly and when scraping off some of my work found that the painting started peeling to it's core, but what was left was just the image, the suggestion of a figure, I had been searching for for about a year and a half. If I hadn't been slapdash I would never had broken through to this new level, and might never have had my first gallery break and might have given up painting altogether.

The same with colour. My "Mother and Child" painting would not have come about if I hadn't run out of yellow ochre and had to resort to cadmium yellow and orange - colours I had hardly used before. At first they seemed so wrong, so alien, but suddenly, after changing the rest of colours to work with them, everything made brilliant new sense. I had grown and moved on by doing this.

Forget about the alizarin. It's like trying to hang onto your childhood. You don't get to live fully in your adulthood if you do that. Perhaps the other reds don't look as jewel-like because you've organised the rest of your palette to work with alizarin.

If an artist's paintings are worth having around for thousands of years then I am sure the art conservators will have adequate will, knowledge and means of looking after them. All the work they are doing looking after the old paintings now are giving them more and more information to keep paintings in existence.

[Sharon Knettell]

Thomasin,

I do think, that an artist's ego, especially in relationship to his work, if allowed to go on infinitely, would outlast the most adamantine materials.

For many of us who are older and especially figurative artist's, this seeming 'obsession' with materials is the result of wandering in the desert for many years. We had to pick up tiny twigs and branches of information wherever we could find them, libraries, museums, wherever. The internnet has opened up a torrent of information that was heretofore unavailable. Some of us are like kid's in a candy store.

I have to agree that some of of this worrying about longevity and the right color can be obsessive and down right silly. However I do like JUST the right shade of a color, not close, but exact. Alizarin has been an important red in portrait and figurative painting, even though it was known to be somewhat fugitive because of the perfect match to the deep rich wines that are found in the shadows of human skin. It is also a wonderful cheek colorant.

Some of us are more concerned than others about materials, colors and longevity, but the internet and the discussions therein are but a menu to choose from.

[Thomasin Dewhurst]

Originally Posted by Sharon Knettell

Alizarin has been an important red in portrait and figurative painting, even though it was known to be somewhat fugitive because of the perfect match to the deep rich wines that are found in the shadows of human skin. It is also a wonderful cheek colorant.

Human skin is as varied in colour as the reds available in oil paints today.



Sharon, I am not arguing for argument's sake, and I have actually gleaned a great deal from your (and other's) discussions of paint and art products. So I do thank you very much for that. I think that one should pursue one's interests if they are really enjoyed i.e painting material research in your case. But this is where my point lies. I believe in a sort of gracious hedonism when it comes to life. Leave unnecessary suffering to your school years where you were forced to adapt yourself to someone else's idea of how to be and what to do. If you can't happily fit yourself to the world (and someone else's palette prescription), then make a change so that they fit to you. But this goes for the pursuit of the seemingly impossible too - the perfect heavenly red; the perfect heavenly image. If it thrills you, it thrills you. This suffering of choice, this toil, then, becomes your hedonism.

I am championing a person's own personal choices and his/her right to practice them. I think that working according to received rules is valuable only if it directs you further towards your own personal vision. If a rule has any truth and relevance about it then it will come into effect in your work anyway. I may, after running out of whatever paint I am using at the time, come around to alizarin and wonder how I ever lived without it, but not now. And for you it's the opposite, and I respect that very much. I think that to achieve as much of a state of grace and glory through art as one can, one should be both unbudging and also open to change when needs honestly be.

[Richard Bingham]

Tom, hurrah for the centrists! They keep us balanced.

Originally Posted by Thomasin Dewhurst

I am championing a person's own personal choices and his/her right to practice them. I think that working according to received rules is valuable only if it directs you further towards your own personal vision.

Thomasin, do you really think anyone on this forum has the motive (even if they owned the power) to "force" others to accept their choices? Your comment about working to rules is sensible only as it appertains to stylistic and aesthetic choices. When working with physical materials, you're bound by physical rules. You may be in emptional denial of gravity, but if you jump off a 10-story building, you'll still be just as dead.

Here's the good news: As Tom points out, painting in oils is forgiving enough that it's pretty hard to use any of the materials commonly employed to the point of failure. Even the most flagrant violations of proper techniques of application will last plenty long enough to be seen, stored, then tossed in the landfill.

Here's better news: The actual craft of applying paint in a workmanlike manner to insure the best (archival) results is not rocket-science. The materials necessary to ply the trade are simple and few.

And finally, I know I'm dangerously addicted to leaping into the breach to spill everything I know about materials and painting, because on fora such as this one, perennially one encounters questions about materials which should be dirt-simple, but confuse folks who are doing good work, because the systematic teaching of a few simple procedures and the nature of a few simple materials has not been taught for decades. I think they deserve answers, and discussions like this provide that. I'm certainly not always right, but I'm always sincere.

Originally Posted by Thomasin Dewhurst

I haven't painted in a week looking at this forum!

Shame on you! Get back to work ! (and happy painting!)

[Tom Edgerton]

I think that Thomasin has a real point here.

I'm grateful that there are artists and manufacturers in the world who consider themselves to be "keepers of the flame" in regard to sound choices in artists' materials and sound painting practices. It's knowledge that needs to be researched, documented and passed on, partly because a lot of it was very nearly lost.

But there lurks in the discussion sometimes an implication that painting materials--especially in the discussion of oils--are fragile and delicate creatures and that if one is to use them one needs to walk on eggshells. Oil painting is an extremely robust and resilient medium, forgiving of experimentation. My fear is that some potentially transcendent images will remain unexpressed because we engender in artists an unnecessary timidity about procedure. Reasonable care with archival procedure will produce a hardy and durable result.

To Marvin's point, the art that belittled or ignored sound procedure in the past doesn't survive and I agree with that assessment, but I also resist the implication--not necessarily Marvin's--that there is an extremely narrow line that can be walked in regard to materials and application. It's more complex than that; I would submit that the really great art that survives today was created by a wide spectrum of both artistic attitude and approach to technique and materials. And I would also agree with Thomasin that part of the reason that the great art of the past survives was that the images were transcendent and moving enough that someone valued them and saw to it that they were protected.

I once heard Burt Silverman say, "Concentrate on making great art, and if it's good, someone will be around to take care of it." This makes a lot of sense to me.

I don't believe we ought to be oblivious to sound procedure, or that experimentation and innovation depends on ignoring it. This is the conceit of a childish iconoclast that prizes rebelliousness for its own sake. But sometimes on this forum we get inquiries that sound like there are neophyte painters out there who are paralyzed with fear about technique and the "rules," and I'd hate to see the next "Juan de Pareja" go unpainted for this reason.

By now you know that I'm a Centrist in most things, so I expect that my moderate attitude toward this discussion will be unsatisfactory to artists on both ends of the spectrum. I'm comfortable with that.

(PS...I've occasionally cooked with flaxseed oil. It's really not bad.)