Tuesday, March 01, 2016

White Paint

At art college, the first thing you used to do with your cohort of students was paint the walls of the the studio white. In Brighton in the 1970s about 30 of us shared a big room and we got out the rollers and slurped the paint on the the walls, covering the worn out white that had been there the previous year.
I have always loved this process and I've spent the past two days painting the walls and ceiling of one of the rooms where I live. It's not a big room but it seems to be absorbing a lot of 'one-coat' white. One wall has had three coats and still looks like it needs more. I have one more wall and half the ceiling to do, plus the 'more' that any of the walls needs. I learned how to size fresh plaster and I've even made my own pot of size.
It's taken hours to do, and I made it a rule to stop when I get clumsy; as soon as I put a foot in the paint roller tray, knock over a teetering box or trip on the dust sheets, that's it. The brushes get rinsed, the indestructible painter's trousers get chucked in the washing machine and I scrape the paint off my face.
Painting walls is wonderfully therapeutic and it has been a great antidote to a rainy and gloomy March 1st; I suspect that it will trigger inner artiness and I might even start drawing again.

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