I think I'll always be a learning junkie. Since I graduated with my BFA in 1981 I have continued my education attended workshops and classes relating to business, marketing and similar subjects, along with taking creative classes like learning to paint.
As a student I was in the design division of the fine arts department at the University of Kansas, not the fine art department. My concentration was in structural fiber, aka weaving, so I never took any painting classes while in college. Hard to believe that a person with a Bachelors Degree in Fine Art was never required to take a painting class. However that's the way it was when I was in college.
My first painting class in the early 90s was a beginning watercolor class taken from well-known Hawaii artist Marcia Ray. I wanted to find out if applying watercolors to paper worked the same way as dyes did on fabric and yarns. I learned there were no similarities to watercolors and dyes. I do remember my final project, a still life painting of a bowl of mangoes, looked pretty flat.
I took more of an interest in painting since I found a close-up appreciation of acrylics while volunteering at our local arts council gallery. So in the mid-2000s I took a beginning acrylic painting class from Mary Hinck who holds a MFA in painting. I had met Mary many years ago and always like her personality and her very large abstract paintings, so I jumped at the change to take a class with her. She showed us the basics and set up still life arrangements in class. I did learn about applying acrylics to canvas and working with mediums, which I was clueless about. After that class I came to the conclusion that realistic painting was not my style. A couple of years later I took an abstract painting class, only to be told I should be teaching the class.
After working with acrylics in my recent collages on canvas (image above: "Seascape", 18 x 14" collage/acrylic painting with handmade recycled cast paper and coconut fiber) I feel that oil paints may suit my purposes better. I like to work with the (acrylic) paints when they are still fluid, so I'm thinking oils. I remember in grade school that smell of turpentine working it's way up from the basement when my mother would host her painting group at our house. I also remember the same smell, which I liked, as a teenager at a friends house where his mother was an artist. However do I really want to invest in new mediums? I'll keep it in the back of my mind and when the timing right I'll pursue oils.
