Workshop shows artists how to paint with cold wax

Behind every picture is a painter, and behind every painter is a story.

Translating those stories into images, in an unusually tactile way, is the goal of the cold-wax painting workshops being held at LucSculpture School and Studios on Greenwood Ave., just north of the Danforth.

The mixture of oil paint and cold wax allows underlying layers to form on a painting. The experience, says workshop instructor Linda Woolven, is like using a knife to play with icing on a cake.

Since the workshop was the first time many had tried the technique, each attendee was given an image as a guide: a wooden house and a field with yellow flowers. Among the participants was Anna Polese. She took up painting two years ago, and one of the items on her bucket list is to paint as much as she can.

“I was diagnosed with macular disorder, so I have to speed up my bucket list,” she said. “I want to paint until I couldn’t do it anymore.”

Macular degeneration leads to vision loss. She used the picture of the house and flowers as a guide but used different colours.  Colours are important to Polese. Every painting, she learned, helps her perceive and translate images.

“It’s not something I expected, but I think I can be happy with the fact that my translation for today is a good one,” she said.

Polese also talked about accepting her reality.

“There are some things in the world that I cannot change, but there are some things that I can change,” she said. “It just reminds me that God can grant me the wisdom to tell the difference between the two.”

Others wanted to paint freely and refused to use the picture guide.

Toresa Looui, 70, has been attending painting workshops at her local community centre, but it was getting crowded there. She started painting five years ago as a pastime. She said she prefers expressing images from her head  instead of copying them.

“I could never follow any painting based on the pictures,” she said.

“It’s more like meditation to me. When I’m angry or very upset, that’s the time when I really want to paint. It takes me off reality.”

Woolven, the instructor, brought her own cold-wax paintings for others to see. She started experimenting with the medium about five years ago.

“I sold my work to one of my galleries and one asked me to do a cold-wax demo and they brought in a bunch of media,” Woolven said.

From there she started running different workshops, including one that demonstrates how to paint with emotions. She said she looks forward to helping more people explore their skills and learn new techniques.