Cadmium Yellow Medium
I will be forever grateful to Mr Gerald Wray for the way in which he introduced me to painting with acrylics. With one college course, several private studio sessions, and much lively informal discourse he taught me in a couple of years what would have taken a lesser mortal tedious decades.
He poured his soul into the rough garden of our eager talents. Taught us how to weed out immature pet theories, helped us organize our approach to art, showed us how to think about art and life, and helped us to discover truth and beauty in so many new places.
And then he passed away this year.
Leaving a gap in the lives of all he taught and influenced. He was a neo-impressionist who painted landscapes in oils and acrylics. He shared with me the secrets of acrylics as well as oil painting. The majority of my pieces have been acrylic on canvas.
Acrylic is water-based, easy to clean up, and less pungent.
Watching Mr.Wray demonstrating acrylic on canvas was poetry in time and space and colour. His effortless dabbing of the highlights into a ravine, into a wooded valley, you just learned so much.
"Less is more."
"Keep it amorphous."
Words for any young artist to live by as we gingerly applied cadmium yellow medium, toned down of course with titanium white. Gentled neutralised with yellow ochre light.
