When the sun is bleak and the heart is heavy it’s time to do something you normally wouldn’t do…and that’s paint with acrylic paint with your left hand.

I come from a family where natural fibres are considered far superior to anything produced in a factory or laboratory. So I remember being quite challenged by the name “acrylic” at Art School. Why would anyone want to use acrylic paint, I thought as I slopped the irky mix onto my portrait number sixty five. Why would anyone use this paint for anything but practice or fun? It’s not a serious medium..ahmm..Hence my ascension into oil paint and my love of everything oil.

The dominant definition is:

“Acrylic paint is a fast drying paint containing pigment suspension in acrylic polymer emulsion”. To me this means everything opposite to oil and my extra slow drying work. With colours that sparkle like a Tinkerbell movie, smooth creamy texture and artificial smell, there is nothing natural about these wonderfully modern paints!

So for some unbeknown reason I am drawn to experiment. I want to paint colours and shapes that mean nothing to anyone but me, whatever I want. I want to take 20 tubes and not mix meticulously as usual. I want to restore the meaning of things and feel some flow and inspiration. I want to muck about with hopeless abandon and remember my story. But to be freed completely I will experiment using my non dominant hand. This act alone is supposed to place you in the most intuitive side of your brain. So I get a feel for fast, random, incidental, active paintings (so different from my normal practice).

I find to keep using my left hand is hard when I want to skip along. I end up using my fingers and paint direct from the tube. I feel free, free to paint hundreds of nothing bit acrylics, that mean nothing to anyone but me, and slowly but surely I receive ideas for my next oil works.

I am inspired by my three year Old’s poster paint on cardboard paintings. She will sit for up to an hour churning out painted squares and arranging them. I’m thinking I can do a similar sequence on square canvases in oil.

At the end of my session I feel like I could cover every wall of my home with cardboard squares covered in acrylic wing dings, yes that feels more like me. I am enlightened that the result, although bewildering simplistic could bring new light to my day, more meaning in the fog and a renewed sense of who I am. I thoroughly recommend this exercise to all, and yes acrylic paint is so much cheaper than oil, so go for it!