Guided Risks

BK (before kids) oil was my medium of choice. When our middle child became seriously ill, ridding the house of toxins became a necessity so I switched to watercolors. They are also quick and visceral, asking to be painted in fleeting non overworked moments. It meant I could leave a painting out considering next steps between changing diapers and tramping behind little bodies through the mud and woods. When watercolor became "clicheish",  Asian ink made me consider the essence of objects depicted with a sweep and twist of a brush. Visceral and ethereal, it captured spirit. These techniques revitalized water's movement of pigment on the rag paper of western watercolor.
Our son, with the healing properties of homeopathy, survived his illness and grew 6 inches in a month. Pastel's re entered our home. Ah the colors of this medium the layering the sculpting can not be surpassed.
Now, years later, oil seems intriguing again-- the goopiness, the shadows cast by layered paint, the challenge of making non pasty looking lights. But so much is forgotten! I must be the scientist before I can be a painter.

When beginning with a new medium or revisiting an old friend, I must be the scientist. Laying out all colors of old carefully recording each name   until I can definitely tell which is which, playing with mixtures keeping track of warms and cools, which if added to what will make its neighbor sing.
It is hard taking time out from 'work' when one's work is on what one's family lives. But to NOT take the time out to play and be that scientist means taking the risk of repeating what has always worked. Guided risk taking has always been integral in my vision - in what I need to do as an artist (and mom like using homeopathy to replace damaging drugs). It is a discipline. But when knowledge becomes second nature, then comes the transcendence, the moment when the creation of art is more than the act, it is when the hand moves on its own in response to the senses.
PS By the bye- applying the charged brush technique of Asian Ink Painting to oil creates a perfect coloring for incremental  fluid shifts I do not think this human hand could do otherwise! Oh my goodness!!!!
PPS I wonder how a good Asian Brush would work in oils? Has anyone ever experimented with that?