The Days Before You Came (oil on canvas, 2022)

(Private Collection)
When I was studying art as an undergraduate, back in the "20th century" (as my son likes to say when he wants to remind me how old I am!), many of today's common hazardous materials regulations didn't exist. We could use spray fixative in the studios and everyone who painted used turpentine as a solvent and for cleaning brushes. Students and teachers even used to smoke in the studios, although not during classes. By current OSHA regulations, tobacco products, turpentine, and spray fixatives cannot even be brought on campus. I don't miss the cigarette smoke and I have found spray fixatives that don't have the nasty, toxic odor of the ones I used in college (although they cost about three times as much!). Except for when I'm laying down a burnt sienna underpainting, using large house painting brushes, I almost always paint with knives, so I don't have the need for cleaning brushes anymore. When I do, I use odorless mineral spirits. When I have students, I insist that they also use odorless mineral spirits so I can be in compliance with OSHA standards and to avoid anyone having a negative reaction to turpentine fumes. Once, a student brought some kind of citrus based solvent that was supposed to be environmentally safe (according to the label, anyway). The fumes were horrendous and gave all of us headaches and nausea, and the student who brought the stuff ended up losing consciousness. I brought him outside for some fresh air, which quickly revived him and he was fine in the end, but I have since banned citrus-based solvents from the studio.

But I do get nostalgic for the aroma of gum turpentine. I use it in small amounts in my main painting medium (It's a secret recipe, so don't even ask!). Whenever I smell it, I am instantly transported back to my youth as a struggling undergraduate art major with grandiose aspirations of becoming the next Rembrandt or Dürer, whilst struggling to figure out how to paint convincing shadows or to properly compose a drawing. I have bittersweet memories of those days. The many long, arduous hours of labor to produce mostly mediocre works of art were often demoralizing and I had practically no social life or time for other interests. Yet, somehow, I managed to remain optimistic despite my numerous "failures". I tell my students now that they will have to make a lot of bad pictures before they start making good ones so don't look at the bad pictures as failures; they are successes because each one means that you have one fewer bad pictures to make. I know that might sound like a platitude, but I wish someone had said that to me when I was in my early 20s. Not that it would have made much difference, I suppose. I kept working anyway....