My reaction to reading queries online regarding oil painting technique is one of sadness and confusion. There are some serious painters with good knowledge of the ways and means of oil painting giving advice, but an overwhelming number of misguided aspiring oil painters doing dreadful things with paint.
Initially I wanted to be an ‘artist’. I think I was attracted to the lifestyle as during the early 1960’s I dressed the part, in desert boots, roll neck sweater, corduroy pants and duffle coat. I even smoked a pipe, Sobranie Black Russian cigarettes and developed a taste for red wine and coffee. This did nothing for my painting skills but I fitted in. Well not really! My art instruction was barely minimal and I was studying things like Physics and Chemistry as well as the dreaded Mathematics. It wasn’t until the early 1970’s that oil painting became an integral part of my life. Slowly at first but gradually I became hooked on that heady perfume of gum turps, oil paint and linseed oil with overtones of linen.
At this time I discarded the idea of being an artist and worked towards becoming an oil painter. Part time at first, learning the craft to the point where I could pass on the knowledge to others and paint full time. My teachers impressed upon me the importance of painting from life to the point where for the last 40 years I have done little else.
When I am asked, ‘What do you do for a living?’ I generally answer that I am a painter. Of course as the old joke goes two rooms one day, so the term oil painter usually satisfies the questioner but many say, ‘Oh! An Artist?’
Yes, I make oil paintings. It is a craft which in the form I was instructed stretches back in time to around the 15th century. Of course inventions such as premixed colours and the paint tube have made life easier for the painter but basically what we do echos those methods. The thing that both intrigues and annoys me is the complications that are put in the way of the aspiring practitioner such as media to speed up or slow down the drying time of a painting or the use of acrylic paint over oil or oil over acrylic over oil paint. My advice for most of the questioners asking for advice on line would be ‘find a good teacher.’
My last blog was titled ‘Call Me Old fashioned But…..’ but I could also call myself simple as my paint box contains only Oil Paint, Linseed Oil, Brushes and a Palette Knife. I paint on oil primed linen canvas and always from life. I let my paintings dry in their own time.
The Art in my work comes from the selection of my subject matter, the arrangement and lighting of the still life or the sitter. Then comes the hard part, the representation of the shapes that make up that subject using that simple set of tools, no artificial aids, just my eyes. I construct a collage of ocular facts which I hope finally does represent my selected subject. In other words I make an oil painting of what I see without enhancement or modification apart from the fact that it now is in two dimensions rather than three.
It’s what i do.
Don James 26th November 2023
Don James Art 