Painting in Oil - a bit of a rant

first, quick strokes of acrylic under painting

ready to start painting in oil

The Artist #1

After 14 years of painting almost entirely in encaustic, I joyfully am now painting the new series, "The Artist" in oil over acrylic. I am NOT an encasutic artist. I am an artist.

I used and taught almost every technique in encasutic over the last 10 years and it was fun, but more and more I am seeing mediocore or bad encasutic painting posted on Face Book -on many different encaustic pages,  some that remind me of grade school finger painting, that are loved by many. To me it is all about the lovely surface of encasutic and has nothing to do with the fundamentals of painting. It is like making a meaningless painting and pouring resin over it. The surface fools the eye into thinking some thought went into the creation.

Particularly, now that I am in the last chapter of my life, I want to make real paintings. So I am painting figuratively once again; a subject that I understand and making large paintings in oil. Yes, I could use use encaustic, but why?

I still have my complete setup for teaching encasutic and will teach again, if students are interested in something besides surface.

Here is the process of my first painting in the series. It is 80 cm x 100 cm