I am not an eavesdropper, but I was tempted to lean in the direction of two women I heard whispering in the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, "Did you know some of Van Gogh's paintings are still not dry?" she said with the authority of someone who has just received a message from Zeus handed down from Mount Olympus.

"What!" I thought, "Over 100 years and still not dry."

The question is, should one believe a "whisperee"? Should one take this as a statement of fact without verification? Should one walk up to "whisperees", confess that one has snooped and demand the source of this factoid?

Or should one run over to the painting and plunge one's grimmy hands into the oil. Direct experience!...As a young child learns to grab everything and examime it.

"Mommie, mommie, I want that," a blue-eyed dimpled child screaming.

"Mommie, mommie, I want to grab that Van Gogh." That's what I wanted.

I eyed the guard by the door. Years of imprisonment for attacking a Van Gogh...prison bars...lousey food...solitary confinement. Perhaps on second thought the direct approach was not such a good idea. I decided instead to use "deductive logic". That is a fancy way of saying that I decided "to think" instead of "act".

Perhaps a little deductive logic would shed some light on the matter, and thereby avoid confession, no one likes to be labelled a "snoop" and no one likes to be carted off to jail in handcuffs.

The facts...

Van Gogh certainly did squeeze his paint out of the tubes in blobs of pigment. The thickness would surely require a long time to dry, but a century? Doubtful, but perhaps....there is a minute possibility....but really...well maybe. I hope you now see how logic solves all technical problems.

One could say that Van Gogh used a lot of paint. But after all, his brother, Theo, was footing the bill for his art supplies.

I can certainly state for a fact that while I was snooping through my sister's things I did find an oil painting she had done in grade school and I discovered by the touchie feelie sort of appoach that 20 years after being painted, it was still not totally dry. I really prefer not to use the word snoop....perhaps exploring would be a better word...or investigating...or cleaning out. I was definitely not snooping.

Is it really that important if Van Gogh's paintings took forever to dry? For me it is. I HATE slow drying paint!!!!! "I don't wanna wait! I don't wanna wait!" said pacing the floors and wringing my hands. "Hurry up. Hurry up." Patience is not one of my virtues. There is nothing good about "slooooowwwww drying" paint.

Well...actually there is.

BEAUTIFUL BLENDS

The good news is that because of the slow drying time it is easy to blend colors in oil. You can blend and blend and blend and...

Good news Two...ERASABILITY
You can grab a rag with a little turpentine on it and erase, erase, erase right down to the bare canvas.

One of my professors accidentally drug his jacket through a palette of yellow paint. He left the room and, although he returned smelling like turpentine, the yellow was gone. I, on the other hand, had the bottom blow out on a tube of yellow acrylic paint which squirted yellow all over my brand new shirt. Although I immediately ran for the water, the yellow was never to disappear. Naturally the paint hit me in the... embroderied emblem.

AND NOW...the bad news about oil paint

MUD

What happens when you mix red, green, orange, blue, purple, brown, yellow?

Hint: You don't get a froggie in a blender. You get something.....well... brownish...muddish...

Because of the slow drying time of oil, painting over colors causes the colors to mix together. Too much overpainting without allowing the paints to dry results in "mud".

Uh, oh, that brownish color you get from playing in the dirt, mud oozing through your fingers. Where I grew up in Texas the soil was a clay base. Being the epitome of coordination, I, of course, fell into a ditch. I returned home covered in this yellowish brownish ooze. Later one of my oil paintings ended us with that same oozie color. Got the picture now? Mud! Really not an exciting color for a painting.

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