For the Magic of Oil, We paint in Oil!!

For the Magic of Oil, We paint in Oil!!

Oil is an expensive, time taking medium ... only serious artist around the globe use it...Most Indian artists today use Acrylic. Most Indian art buyers buy Acrylic paintings. They don't know any better!! Oil paintings have vanished from the contemporary Indian art scene!! Most artists would confess in private, because of "lack of time" they work in Acrylic paints!! They 'finish' their painting.. Just in time for 'shows' by using this quick-drying-cheap-synthetic plastic-medium!! And here we paint for the sake of painting, for the sheer pleasure of painting in Oil, for its beauty and texture, for it shine and translucent quality, for it's colour range and mixing ability, for the smell of linseed and turpentine on our hands, for the sake of art... For the magic of Oil, we paint in Oil!! And not for 'shows' not for 'deadlines'!! They paint over night... In Acrylic and the very next day a 'painting' is ready!!
So taking some of my printed brochure I went around town dropping them in newly opened galleries. In one such gallery as i entered i saw work canvass being arranged along the gallery floor and against the wall.. getting ready to hang.. a new show! As the girl behind the desk was busy i sneaked and pick a few canvases... all had strange feel to it... the colours all finished at the edges of the canvas with a machine like accuracy!! the revere side had no stains or colour smudges!! They were all digital art... but when I was told very confidently by the gallery manager they were "Oil on Canvas'!!

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One thing which is very close to my heart..   and it use to make me sad.... 
It maybe a bit technical for the uninitiated, but i will try to write this as plainly as possibly. Hope everyone would understand

I love 'oil paintings'. But due to availability of cheap and easy to use Acrylic paints many artists slowly have started to work in Acrylic. The reasons were: Acrylics are cheap.. (it is synthetic plastic paint.)

Acrylics dry up very soon, unlike oils... so you an finish a painting and sell it the next second!!!

Oil takes time to dry and it not so easy to use. You have to spend lot time to hone that skill.

All theses reasons drove many to 'Acrylic'... but a painting in acrylics won't have the charm, lustre and beauty of an Oil. Oil paints like Water colours are 'old school' and timeless classic mediums.

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In India, most artist... especially from the young generation (from 1990-2014) have completely stopped working in oils! In fact there are those who have never ever worked in Oils!!!

Recently I had to find artist from India who work in Oils for a International Art show... I found non!!

The lure of quick money and quick delivery of paintings don't seem to suit our artists from India!! 

They are into 'video art', 'digital art', 'conceptual art' and all such absurd art!!

This is the reason why I was unable to find any good artist from my own country!! Some sent me works but I know that those are not Oils!! Even if they claim they are!! They are ink jets on Canvas!! Or just Acrylic... which they wanted to pass it off as Oils!!

Many Indian Art galleries and artists sell digital prints...  under the pretext of 'hand  painted painting'... 
But are actually digital prints on canvas/paper etc

'Ink jet on canvas' is sometimes get passed off as 'original hand-painted works labelled as: 'Oil on Canvas' or 'Acrylic on Canvas'!! Like the once one can buy in stores like Ikea!! With texture and all... printed on canvas!!! 

One can print thousands!!

Many artists would take out a print out and then add few lose brush strokes to make it look "hand painted"!
Like many of us artists are not great draughtsmen... (lacking the ability to draw accurately etc like a Leonardo or Dali etc.)
so they hide their limitation by taking out print out of a drawing, photograph, painting etc. And then paint over it!! 
To camouflage the print.. some artists take out drawing or sparsely coloured printout and then slap oil or acrylics paint over the print and pass it off as 'original, hand-painted works of art'!! 

When you buy Art works...Be careful!! Get an expert to authenticate them..

I am not against 'Digital Art' per se.. But the buyer/art lovers etc. have the right to know, exactly what the medium etc is...

Let me tell you from own experience.. it was 2006 I was holding my solo show in Delhi after a gap of 10 or more long years!!

Things had changed, galleries I used to know had closed down... Unknown small time galleries were now too snooty to pick the phone and talk to me... 
So went about visiting them personally... in once such up-market gallery in New Delhi, I saw a show was in progress...

Upon asking... was told the works were "all Oil on Canvas"!!

It was a lie... I know the sight, smell and texture of oil... and most importantly no artist can keep the sides of the canvas so clean!! It was of course some kind of ink jet on canvas, where the sides remain squeaky clean!!

Oils and Watercolour will always be there... it is Classic and timeless.

Also 'representative' art will live on... everyone enjoys realism in art.

Recently I was asked to help in selecting artist across the globe.. Oil painters for an International Art show.. alas i couldn't find a single decent Indian Artist who had body of works in Oils!!

Oils in 9x9cm by Hiroshi Matsumoto

9x9 painting (9 cm x 9 cm / app. 4 x 4 inch) by Hiroshi Matsumoto

I stumbled across Hiroshi Matsumoto's Oils on Facebook* and am so happy to see someone painting so well, in Oils in a 9x9 painting (9 cm x 9 cm / app. 4 x 4 inch).

I too love oils and paint mostly in small sizes too...
But unfortunately in my home country (India) artists and collectors have completely forgotten the charm of oils and small sized works. The awareness is lacking. Acrylic has taken over.. and it's ugly colours are everywhere!!

Painting in large size is order of the day. Now size is everything as it fetches more money to the artists... and as for the buyer he is too happy to boast of a large work in his office or drawing room walls?!!

I have written about this in my blogs... But this trend continues... No one has the time to look at a painting anymore.

Oils have just vanished from contemporary Indian Art!! Just visit any online Indian art galleries and you will see Acrylic ruling the roost!!

Acrylic is a quick drying synthetic plastic paint.. and paintings can be executed within hours and sold the very next moment... Flushed with new found money the buyers and the painters both are in a frantic hurry. Unfortunately an acrylic (painting) can never have the quality of an Oil...

Acrylic is a flat, unnatural, muddy, dirty, and difficult to mix... fast drying colour.. there is no lustre, no hues.. Most often the painting can look lifeless, flat, 'hard', 'dirty' especially if applied in thin coats with lots of water. I used to paint in Acrylics too.. but I would use it directly from the tube in thick impasto.... it works OK in small sizes.. as one can work on it quickly without getting dry.. but when you try that on larger size work.. even the thick paint will dry off even before you had chance to think what your next stroke or colour should be or want to mix with other colures to creat a hue etc.!!

My humble wish and urge to Art lovers across the world..(and more so to my fellow Indians) please look at Oils, and at Acrylic.. you don't need prior knowledge or training... to spot the difference!! So before buying and investing your precious funds into Art... Take some time to look at the quality of the colours of the works. If no contemporary artists are around to look for works in Oils in India (!!!) maybe one can visit Museums. There were Indian artists till about 1990 who used oils... It is no co-incidence that the art boom in India in the early 2000 and the mass productions of paintings (Art?) in Acrylic happened at the same time!!

A well executed small sized painting in Oil can look like a 'Jewellery Box'... it can have that shimmering quality. Hiroshi's oils surely has that shimmering, translucent quality!!

As painter Hiroshi Matsumoto says:

"I love oil paint, it’s texture, viscosity, slow-drying time and smell...

I never know what it is going to be until it's complete."
 
you can see his works here:
 
http://www.hiroshimatsumoto.com/
 
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https://www.facebook.com/hiroshimatsumoto#!/photo.php?fbid=211007668941640&set=a.177745932267814.33654.177743925601348&type=1&theater

Art, Artist & Activism...

In the room the women come and go,

Talking of Michaelangelo. 

― T.S. Eliot

The sight of 'Artists', grossly overweight, in designer clothes, attending art shows, sipping cocktails... talking in gibberish English, everyday of the year! 

Sometimes I do miss that sight?!!

Who are these people crowding the art scene? They don’t smell of turpentine or linseed oil... their hands are clean and perfumed... Not the kind which has prepared clay or has ever picked up the chisel and hammer to sculpt...

Once upon a time an artist had a face, one could recognise― a face and a body evolved and tempered by his work. Now these bunch of sissies look they have come straight from the hairdresser to attend an Indian wedding!!

So who are these jokers?

These are actually members of a club!! A club meant only for the phonies, fakes and the pretentious... going around in disguise of artists, curators, art gallery owners, art critics, art connoisseurs, celebrities, pretentious buyers and collectors... they corner most part of the pie.. from government aids in form of scholarships, to getting lucrative art projects and large commission based works viz. murals, designing pavilions in trade shows, state sponsored art projects, art books etc. to shows around the world and getting gallery bookings (in public galleries) without waiting in the queue etc. They are visible on page 3 of daily newspapers or on TV, and they are regularly invited to attain art shows...

This leaves the rest, the ones who had talent, went to art college with real interest in art and have been working in their respective fields sincerely, to struggle on...

Art and artists have their share of problems... from non-artist pretending to be artist, hogging the lime light and the real talent getting sidelined; gallery owners duping young upcoming artists and art-critics writing praises for a bottle of whisky.. we have faced it all.. and continue to..

These self-appointed artists are so well-connected and entrenched in the society that they can easily get gallery bookings, get the media to advertise and most importantly influence the potential buyers into buying works from their curated shows.. and in return pocket a cut from the sale!! Some of these curators seeing the immense sale from art shows these days in India have now started to paint!! It is not difficult.. splash 'the-quick-drying-acrylic-paint' on large canvases.. get them framed well.. title the show with a bombastic name, write an incomprehensible account of the works on the catalogue.. hold mammoth a show..and you are a celebrity painter with everyone singing praises of your work and talent!! You have sold all your works at an exuberant price!! And next year the Government will take notice of 'your talent' and may buy some of your works for their Museums or Government offices etc. or send you to some foreign land for an art show!! You will heard telling all and sundry that you are 'an unique combination of being the first certified art curator of India and an artist'!!

I think the Internet has finally given 'us' a chance, a voice and a means to showcase our works and survive without selling our soul. We must utilize this medium and fight back... for we have nothing to lose but everything to gain by exposing these bunch of phonies, fakes and the pretentious.

Art can also be a medium of protest for just causes... Cartoons: Art of Protest... ideally who else, but an artist can do that well?!!  And artists can lead the society to a better life.. art can show the mirror image of the society we live in...

The cartoon has been reproduced here with the kind permission of © Manoj Kureel

We, the artist community face problems like any other.. Artists are part of the society and their participation in it is vital.. And in the present socio-economic condition of the world one shouldn’t be only attending art openings wearing designer wear and sipping wine!!

You can join here:
www.facebook.com/ArtArtistActivism.

Some Paintings Do Have A Story...

Wheat Harvest, Early Summer Noida Villages, India 

Oil on Canvas, 38.5cm x 38.5cm, April 2008. Sold

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Some paintings do have a story...
And this one sure does have one!

It was my first of series of paintings I did in plein air just before the wheat harvest, in fields along Yumuna river in Noida (UP) India.

I went in with my painting equipments et al in the late afternoon ...as in this region the April sun can be very strong early on.. I found the wheat just the right colour.. whitish yellow, ripen..and the plant golden yellow.

Finding a spot I went about starting my work... Working in oils is always messy and complicated and doing it outdoors can be sometimes tormenting!!
I was quite happy this painting came out well... Some don't and then there is a struggle to make it well, and I hate that moment - when the painting is not getting the right look!! Thus immersed in work, trying to finish the painting, I noticed a small girl standing close to my elbow... she blurted out a startled "Hello!!" I realised on the road next to the fields a big black car has quietly stopped by... Next to it her, almost behind my back were here parents. All ogling at the canvas...

Crowds, passerby coming up and asking questions is part of plein air adventure.. unless it's the police or the military, which can be sometimes complicated!!

When I smiled at them, the usual conversation followed...

"Wow! lovely!! You just did that...? We saw you when going towards our farmhouse an hour back... you paint so fast, do you sell? etc etc".

They went away promising to come over to my studio and buying... (which of course they never did!!)

By the time I cleaned all the brushes, palette and packed up, it was dark and I dumped all paints, oils, easels into the back seat and only the wet painting in the dicky of the car- the boot of a car... The biggest problem of oil is to bring back 'wet painting' home safely... My work is thick impasto, with fresh colours like a relief.. a kind of a torte!! One little touch or getting rubbed softly, brushed by anything as gentle as the end of your skirt or your shirt sleeves will completely ruin it...

I kept the wet canvas on the floor of the car dicky.

Which I generally keep empty for wet paintings.

On the way home I stopped by for some tea at my friend's small tea shop next to the fields. Back home I didn't want to open the boot/dicky in the dark and bring out the wet canvas and carry it up three floors... So left it to do so the next day. Rest of my painting gear lies always in the car.

Next day I had some work in the day in Delhi so I left in my car and after finishing my work I drove straight back to the Noida fields... I started a new work as soon as I reached without even taking out the wet one done last evening..so that once done I can lineup the two works and compare and also do the last minute touch ups..

So once done with the second painting I went to my car to open the dicky/boot... and what I saw broke my heart!! In the night I hadn't realised the existence of an old stupid empty plastic bottle!! Which had been using the wet canvas as a dance floor...

So here it was, a finished work had a worthless plastic bottle rolling all over it the whole time I was driving on bumpy roads...

Many of my works are very spontaneous and I don't rub and repaint over and over. I like the strokes to show... And here all those lovely thick layers of colour impasto were all smothered!!  It had never happened before in this scale, though it does happen.

I don't like to sit on a work which I have once finished...

Anyway with a dogged determination I went about recreating. At the end though I doubt anybody can make out that this painting had a makeover?!! Can you?

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