Why did I choose oils over other existing media?

My answer is quite simple:  The oil painter can change and correct at will.  Her paint remains comfortably wet.  She can obtain the most subtle gradations with ease.  She only needs to smear.  Her picture can be endlessly repainted.  To match tones is easy.  Her colors are the same whether wet or dry.  She has no reason to be neat.  She can begin by painting as crudely as she pleases, in great rough areas of light and dark, and then refine and adjust them later.

An outline fixed at the beginning would be only a hindrance.  She can put it in as a detail at the end, or even, if she wishes, leave it out altogether.  She can permit herself the most outrageous freedoms and the most monumental messes.  Just as the art of the tempera painting is concerned with lines and the color the lines contain, the oil painter's technique has first of all to do with light-and-dark in tone and back-and-forth in space.  Ah, sweet freedom!

"Pueblo Winter"        (16" X 20")      Oil on Canvas