The Craft of Painting

The Craft of Painting

Interesting essay on the quixotic quest of some artists to follow in the steps of the old masters. Probably boring if you don't paint. Quite interesting if you do, and are obsessed with the quality of your craftsmanship. I think his evaluation of acrylic gesso as a primer for oil based paints maybe a little overarching (I'll have to do some reading on the latest research), but otherwise, an extremely lucid assessment.

Whereas there are a great many artists who feel that the secret to the Old Masters' brilliance lies, at least in part, in employing the same materials they used, I feel this line of thinking overlooks a very important fact: the Old Masters used the best materials that were available to them in their time, in the interest of preserving their works as far into the future as possible. We would be operating more in the spirit of the Old Masters by using the best materials available to us, today, than by insisting on using what we believe was being used three hundred years ago. A great deal has been written about what the Old Masters supposedly used, and how they used it, yet most of it was essentially guesswork, speculation, conclusions drawn based on too little evidence, given greater credence than is warranted by virtue of its having been published in print. Furthermore, recent discoveries from conservation scientists, analyzing paint samples from Old Master paintings being restored, have proved much of the speculation of the past 150 years to have been in error. No doubt this is alarming news to so many artists who have invested a great deal of time and trouble in creating works following what they thought were sound practices, read in old books purporting to contain the "lost secrets of the Old Masters." I have no doubt I will encounter much resistance to the information I bring to light here, as I often do in my teaching, private conversations and correspondence with other artists who have fallen in love with the way they painted and the things they painted with for so many years. To them, and for them, I am sorry, but the truth is better acknowledged than ignored. There are consequences to consider.