RICHARD SWANN ART

Blue Pot

It’s not as if Jackson’s (bless their large range and affordability) can claim that this was the smallest box they had available for posting a 37ml tube of paint.  They gave themselves away by putting the paint in a smaller, perfectly postable box inside the bigger one, cushioned lovingly in plastic air-filled pillows.  Why they stopped there and didn’t put an even larger box around the whole thing is a mystery.  But perhaps this is misjudging the packers.  I worked in a packing factory, and like to think that all those upside down labels and unsealed envelopes and burned magazines (that machine was a joke) were a cry for help, a yell of defiance from people forced to listen to Heart FM all day.  Maybe this cardboard behemoth is actually a piece of conceptual art, a devastating critique of the consumer society, a rebuke to me for not patronising my local art shop.

Reason I didn’t patronise the local art shop is because this was a very specific tube of paint, Gamblin Flake White Replacement, made in the USA.  Your actual flake white is of course poisonous, and like syphilis and consumption has gone out of fashion.  But it was used for centuries (probably, too lazy to check) and you have to wonder whether we’re missing anything (other than deafness, insanity and all the other symptoms of lead poisoning), and this stuff is supposed to have similar characteristics but in a non-toxic form.  Did a quick sketch to try it out (see above) and the first hurdle was getting it out of the tube.  What eventually emerged was a reluctant half inch of SATAN’S SNOT which is not what it says on the label.   It’s the right colour but the consistency is unlike anything I’ve used before, like painting with mozzarella cheese, stringy and resistant.  There was an immediate reaching for the palette knife as being the only thing on hand equal to handling the rubbery resin, followed by the discovery that it’s very sculptable stuff.  In fact very usable if you like a congealed and textured paint surface, so I’m not giving up on it just yet.

Hope springs eternal that one day the right painting surface, the right paint, the right brush, will happen along and magically hand the ability to paint to us.  It’s a delusion that underpins a lot of the art materials market –  within you lurks a painting god, just waiting to be liberated by the invention of the battery-powered ceramic painting stick.  Still, got me a new toy to play with.  If I can persuade any more out of the tube…