Adventures in Acrylic-land

As my son is unloading the acrylic mediums into neat stacks on the floor, I browse the unfamiliar world of polymer paint additives at my local art store. Mind-boggling names, in-discriptive labels, all in neat white tubs lined perfectly on the shelf. I think:
"is this what it has come too....?"

My narrow use of additives late in my oil painting years, included candle wax (Yeah, I was going for the stuff the flakes and cracks off the canvas to re-view what hides shallowly beneath the surface) and coffee grounds [with a 8:1 ratio in scolding water]. There was not much else I wanted to affix to my process.....but that is where all of this start.

Candle Wax and base of Preminition i

And this is where I left off when I was with [my first] child. I struggled for 8 months trying to find alternative ways to paint with my oils, not breath the fumes, protect my skin. I changed my palette to include those colors least noxious, hated my new palette, failed to embrace the colors vomiting on my canvas.....and then:
I decided to try and search ways to make paints that wouldn't have the potential of strangling me in my sleep.

I went to spice shops, herbal apothecaries, natural food stores, art supply stores with personnel inept to help me find the tools I was looking for [a glass muller]...the drug store. I gathered my loot and started mixing spices with rubbing alcohol in small dropper bottles. And then I had my son.

Turmeric, Annatto, Indigo, and Black Onyx Cocoa Dyes in Breastfeeding i

My feet were found somewhere below me at the art store where I purchased a few goody mediums to start off with. It is time. I am ready to paint. I am ready to portray the quality of feeling that was once seen in my work. Because no matter how hard I tried to rebel against my professors I graduated a progeny of their teaching...no matter how momentary.

I am starting to feel like the time I spent in a University was purely a stage likened to that in the womb; And now birthed into the world it is time for my wings to unfurl.