To Change and Grow as a Painter

Golden Field
Acrylic on Canvas Panel
10 x 8 in/25.4 x 20.3 cm
Copyright Byrne Smith 2015

I believe my recent run with water soluble oils may have run its course for now. For the last 6 months to a year I have been painting almost exclusively with water soluble oil paint.

Prior to that it was mostly acrylics, and before that it was watercolor, and before that it was....

But last week as I was exploring my "new" limited palette of: ultramarine blue, cad. yellow light (and/or pale), alizarin crimson (and or cad red light), burnt umber, and the ubiquitous titanium white, I wanted to to retrieve these acrylic colors from my paint bin.

So I did.

Like old friends who hadn't seen each other in a good while, we made up for lost time. It was good to feel the easy, buttery strokes of acrylic paint with my flats on the canvas panel.

I think I see a pattern here. Artists and painters should not get stale.They need change. They need growth. I'm finding that as I paint with different mediums, I am challenged and learn new ways to deliver the paint.

So when I revert to an old comfortable friend--this time acrylics--my work doesn't look the same as when I painted with it before. It's different and, what do you know, it's better. At least I think so.

Isn't that what all painters want? To change and grow.