BACKGROUND

This is Part 3 of my blog series on exploring oil and cold wax. I’m exploring this combination of medium because I have always liked the effect this combination produces and I want to explore building it into my practice. Through this exploration, I want to find ways to examine my third space from my subconscious through abstraction.

METHOD

Despite doing various practical experiments as well as online research about working with oil and cold wax. I reached a stage where I was looking for some more formal guidance. So I attended a series of online webinars ran by St Ives School of Painting.

Session 1 was mainly to experiment with making marks with different tools using a limited palette of black, white and greys.

I made six small paintings and below is my favourite:

Paint palette with 50:50 mix of oil and cold wax:

I tried various tools such as palette knifes and pointed scrapers. The new ones for me were the tools typically used for scraping clay for ceramic work – they proved to be very effective at scraping oil and wax mix as one would expect.

The six images created during the session:

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REFLECTIONS

I have enjoyed the session and I was pleased with what I have done so far. Nothing is really new but taking time to just focus on mark making with the medium was good ‘returning to basic’ work that I needed here. It gave me an opportunity to reset my thinking and to give myself time. Rather than feeling I had to produce a finished piece of work because I should be beyond the basics, it was good to just explore without giving myself pressure which was what I wanted to do.

Also, in the past, when I had wanted to experiment with oil and cold wax, I was advised against it by a previous painting tutor because it would change or flatten the oil paint luminosity. Then recently at a group crit when I was asked why I wanted to use oil and cold wax, I couldn’t really come up with a reason apart from ‘I like it; I like the texture and the effect it create’ which seemed inadequate. So I felt I couldn’t justify using the combined medium. But there’s something about it that kept drawing me back so right now I feel very excited that I’m continuing with the exploration and I am doing the webinars.

LEARNING

The technical learning so far is limited after just one session, I plan to expand on this after I have done more of the course.

From a personal learning perspective – I am just excited that I am doing this despite earlier discouragement and I no longer feel the need to justify it. I feel excited that this could be a way for me to use abstraction to express my transculturalism because of the layering and scraping then revealing nature of the medium – it appears I have just justified using this combined medium!

NEXT STEPS

Attend session 2 of the webinar series.