A Painting a Day.....

Oil on canvas, 6" x 6"

I haven't painted much in oils lately because of difficulty with the odor of some of the more widely used mediums. Since the 1970's artists have become more and more aware of the toxicity of artist's materials and have opted for more healthy alternatives in the studio.

I can remember being a teenager taking private oil painting classes and being subjected to the heavy odor of turpentine with no ventilation and using without caution paints with cadmium and lead. There are vivid memories of my high school years and the use of fixative for pastel drawings that formed a huge cloud of headache producing fumes that seemed to be ever present in the art room. College was no different and the art studios were a conglomeration of enough fumes, especially of polymer resins, to wish for a gas mask. I'm amazed at the lack of guidelines in those days, and especially in the public schools and applaud the awareness that the art community and educators have gleaned in the years since.

For me, it was a no brainer when I switched to acrylic painting as a mom with small children. Then as the years went by, migraine headaches became a chronic problem for me which were aggravated by strong chemical odors. It seemed that going back to oil painting would never work out for me.

It was sheer joy to learn of what I'm using now, oil paints based with walnut oil, and my latest experiment, using high quality cold pressed safflower oil (cheap oil will cause unwanted yellowing of pigments). M. Graham makes wonderful oils whose medium is only walnut oil, but at times with many days of painting, despite being non-toxic, to my migraine sensitive system, the mild odor can build up. I use an air purifier for the coldest of days, but all in all M. Graham offers a fabulous alternative. The safflower oil as a medium has the least odor of any I've tried and the dry time is not much worse than the walnut oil, about 3 days for a nice tackiness, 5 days for surface dry and of course longer, for a thicker application.

My days of using acrylics are not completely over, since acrylics have many qualities that I embrace such as fast dry time. They are also very useful as a first coat in a painting to lay down values work out color issues quickly. Oils can then be painted on this bottom layer after a few hours of dry time provided no acrylic medium is used.

This painting is part of my daily painting series, and is small, measuring 6 inches by 6 inches. It was painted from life my studio. This is a very direct and simple theme, standing on it's own, a tea cup that has been in my collection for many years.