Addicted to Paint

Feedback from Loretta Rolison

It started out in a small amounts and under supervision, and was even put on hold for several years, but I am finally able to admit it out loud, ” I am addicted to oil paint.” I love the smell and the viscosity of oil paint. I love the colors and get a thrill when I first squeeze out a glob from a brand new paint tube. I have a closet full of paint encrusted clothes and at the end of a session will find it on my nose or possible an ear lobe when I look in a mirror. When I do not paint , I get so ugly; so very , very ugly………..

I grew up in a small town and my mother sacrificed so I could take part in group art lessons from an individual teacher. I began painting with oils in high school, but my teacher was a potter so he had no experience in painting and gave no instruction. I had one year of fine art in the late 70’s at a public art college that institution did not practice traditional methods . I didn’t know of any traditional art schools or ateliers.

I got married and put art on hold to raise my family, and home school our three sons though high school graduation. In Nov. of 1996 I contracted Guillain Barre’ Syndrome ( a temporary paralysis of the peripheral nervous system) . I was in the hospital and rehab for almost two years and began painting in our living room in my wheelchair in the fall of 1998 since the boys were older and required less individual attention. I entered the Mary Free bed Hospital and Rehabilitation Center’s exhibit for handicapped artists in 1999. I was an inpatient there in 1997 and as a quadriplegic learned to drive my electric wheelchair with my chin looking at the entries. Today I walk with a cane and ankle foot orthotics and have a former bedroom as my studio.

I still enter the MFB art exhibit and also an exhibit sponsored by Artist’s Creating Together-a nonprofit entity which teaches art to handicapped students and also some adults. I donate a painting yearly to their fundraiser. I have taken two three day workshops, but would like a more intensive instruction opportunity which is not available in my rural area.

I would like to improve my art to painting more classically, and admire those who can and do. I would like to paint better landscapes and figure paintings, to create beauty out of the ordinary and to give hope to others who are physically challenged and to anyone who needs beauty or encouragement in their life on any given day.