Harvest Encaustic on Panel

Encaustic on Panel, Framed
10"x24"
(3) 8"x10", (3) 10"x12"
$125

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Ack! My face hurts. I woke up yesterday morning and apparently it is that season again. I jumped straight into some kind of sinus infection, do not pass go, do not collect $200. Usually I have a little bit of a warning, some kind of buildup. Maybe because it rained yesterday it just made my allergies that much worse. I got some canvases gessoed yesterday, but I don't know how much painting I will be able to get done today. Paint fumes probably aren't going to help me out a whole lot. Sigh.

I had a discussion with Beth yesterday about how no paint is actually good for you. She was a chemistry major for much of college before she changed her major to art (kind of like me who graduated with a finance degree... and am now a full time artist???). So Beth actually has studied a fair amount about paint's chemical composition. I did not know that acrylic paints are actually almost as bad for you, or worse, if ingested. Part of their flow agent is formaldehyde. Scary, eh? She told me stories about her many pet fish that lost their lives after she painted rooms with laytex acrylic (indoor house) paint and didn't move their tank from the room beforehand. This also explains why I was starting to get lightheaded after gessoing canvases for several hours.

Honestly, it never really occurred to me that gesso and acrylic paint give off fumes of any kind. They are so touted by the industry as being "healthier" for you. I don't sand the gesso on my canvas, so I've never worried about it. But I must say, I never get lightheaded when I use oils as long as I use Linquin and keep the top on my Turpenoid.

In any case, I have more or less determined that by the time I reach 35 I will most likely be senile or just have totally cooked my brain Ozzy Osbourne style from all the painting I am doing. (Although that man is totally the poster boy for not doing drugs. Kind of sad how anti-establishment he used to be and generally hardcore... now he can barely speak. And I digress...)