The first 10 paintings on this page are taken from images acquired from the cross-country drive that moved me from Los Angeles to New York. If you would like to see how durable a painting is, stick it in a pod with a bunch of other paintings, move that pod 3000 miles, open it up on the other end and see what the condition of the work is.
Nothing is permanent, of course, but people have painted on plaster paintings that have lasted for thousands of years. I am still learning the chemistry, working out the correct ratio of ingredients, playing with texture, and so a thousands years old technique is somehow still new, at least to me. One of the downsides of the learning curve is that early attempts were very prone to chipping. This is actually a good thing when the painting is bad, making it easy to chip it off and re-plaster the panel and try for a better painting. Unfortunately, as I have become better at plastering, the paintings have become much sturdier and much harder to chip away. Happily, I think the paintings themselves are also getting better, so I feel less need to do so.
Linked with those thousands of years I can pretend that what I'm doing might even last.
