In-Person WORKSHOP – Laura Culic

Outline for Cold Wax & Oil painting workshop for Richmond Hill Group of Artists

Oil & cold wax is a super exciting, always engaging and seemingly unlimited technique. I’m looking forward to sharing my experience in this medium, and igniting enthusiasm and creativity with the group.

My approach to this medium is multi-layered. The cold wax gives the paint a bit stiffer and more buttery body than straight oil, thus it lends itself beautifully to applying with various tools – squeegees, bowl scrapers, cabinet scrapers, credit cards, palette knives, brayers… you name it. The wax helps the oil to dry more quickly, facilitating the build up of layers, and also the scraping back into underlying strata. Mark making with oil sticks or with tools is also an integral part of my process. One aspect of the medium that we’ll be unable to explore fully in a two day workshop is the fact that it can be scraped back into at any time in the drying process, to reveal underlying imagery – often exciting and surprising! To get a sense of how this will work, I would encourage participants to bring along smaller paintings that have perhaps stalled or they feel are unsuccessful – oil or acrylic – and work over them with the cold wax and oil.

This technique really helps to loosen up painters who are used to, or even limited by the amount of control achieved with brushes – chance and serendipity enter into the cold wax equation to a great degree.

My paintings, whether representational or abstract, are inspired by the landscape. I occasionally use photos as a jumping-off place, to get into a piece, but most of my work is dictated by the principles of composition, colour and the desire to evoke emotion. Participants are welcome to use their own photo reference, or to paint abstract or landscape inspired paintings imaginatively and intuitively. Although we’ll remain mindful of the basic tenets of good painting: composition and design; colour mixing and temperature; value; intuitive application alternating with analysis, the focus will be on exploring the medium itself, not the final outcome.  I’ll offer loads of one-on-one instruction, insightful and constructive critique and positive encouragement.

Rather than work on completing one perfect painting, I encourage participants to work on several at once, to allow a true sense of play and experimentation pervade. This medium is really fun, and seems to encourage painting “in the moment”. Mistakes don’t really seem to exist – marks made are easily scraped off or painted over, thus contributing to the interest, depth and sense of history in a piece.