Welcome to the Mad House...

I had to share this with you - proof, if you needed it, that a good half of the people who talk about art are barmy.... There's an article I stumbled on, on FlickR - I'm not a member there, I can't even remember how I found it; someone is talking about oil painters getting cancer, from various paints or chemicals we use.  Bob Ross is trotted out again - yes, he died of lymphatic cancer, and yes the way he sloshed Turps substitute about can't have done him any good; but his first brush with cancer happened years before his death, and years before he delved into oil paint. But the cream on this particular cracker was the claim that Chou Enlai, usually known as Zhou Enlai these days, was also an oil painter who died of cancer.  Now, Mr Zhou, formerly Prime Minister of the People's Republic of China, may well have been an oil painter (I don't think he was, but he might have been), but he was also a massive smoker of Chinese cigarettes, and died of cancer of the bronchus and upper respiratory tract.  Plus, he was 78 years old - quite an age for a politician well-known for working ceaselessly at his job, and also known to have been allowed only limited medical treatment because Mao Zedong wouldn't spare him from his duties.  Whichever way you take it, Zhou didn't die of oil paint fumes. I think we can rest easy on the question of our physical health; not so sure about some people's mental health though. 

I knew the (late) chief executive of the non-Hodgkins lymphoma society - she wasn't a medical scientist, but she never warned me about any danger from oil painting.  We know that solvents are dangerous - we know that lead, if ingested to the blood stream, is dangerous; and we know that cobalts and cadmiums are, at best, not toxin free.  The risks of these things is given in some degree of order there.  However, the level of threat can be managed - and their causal agency.... well, if someone gets cancer we look around for reasons; because it seems like such an unnatural and terrible thing to have happened: it's certainly terrible, but it absolutely is not unnatural.  Cells divide, a genetic error creeps in that one may have had since birth, and you have one type of cancer.  Others are directly caused by substances to which we're exposed; many will be a combination of genetic factors and exposure to high risk.  That's just about all I know about cancer, since I've looked into it too so far as a lay-person can (a vital caveat): my brother had cancer - I, so far as I know, have not; yet.  My father died of multiple myeloma; his side of the family has a long history of prostate and stomach cancers; my mother's side seems to be totally cancer-free.   Guess whose genes I'm hoping will predominate in me. In short, of course toxins are dangerous - and we're exposed to different ones every day of our lives.  Will this or that one kill us - we have no idea, but we trundle on, doing what we do, taking a chance if you like with known risks, being self-evidently ignorant of unknown risks.  The mistake lies in ignorant people such as the one I mentioned above lighting upon a particular reason as though it must be true: uncle Fred painted, therefore that's what caused his cancer; cousin Lily worked in pharmaceuticals, that's what caused her cancer.  In most cases, that's just supposition - of course, if you smoke cigarettes and inhale the smoke, that causes several horrible cancers we're now well aware of; if you work with Turpentine without adequate ventilation, you'll be liable to all sorts of respiratory conditions; if you allow lead to get into your bloodstream by sheer carelessness in the studio - though it's a cumulative poison - you will suffer brain damage, and children are particularly susceptible to it. I've gone well beyond the brief here, because none of this was my point at all: the point was one ludicrous assertion, and the hysterical conclusions that can arise from partial or inaccurate reporting of risk.  I had not claimed that painting in oils is risk-free; it isn't; but the risk can be managed - and I think we have allowed ourselves in Europe at least to be too frightened of risk, as though it has to be avoided at all costs and under all circumstances, and that is just not possible to do, even if it's probably sensible to avoid all unnecessary risk.  But first quantify it, on known facts, or extrapolations from what we can observe.  In summary, Norette makes an important point, but the man on Flickr made a supremely silly one, based on a half-baked understanding of one cause of death, and absolute cobbler's awls about another.  I don't pretend that oil painting is without risk - but I don't believe it to be a general or absolute risk for all who undertake it - that's the fear with which we're grappling today, that's what has led a certain paint manufacturer to offer "cadmium-free" oil paints, both buying into a myth and seeking to exploit the fear of it for profit.  The great age which many oil painters reached (I haven't made a survey) suggests that the risks that exist can be contained.   It IS important that we understand what those risks are - because we can then minimize them; but the avoidance of all risk is neither possible, nor desirable: we don't want to become a society, I think, which fears to touch anything because it might bite or blow up in our faces - but that doesn't mean one should try doing a tango with a grizzly bear....  There is balance to be struck.   I commiserate, of course Norette, with the loss of your mother and I know there is intensive research into the causes and treatment of this disease and of other kinds of cancer; which seems at last to be making some progress.  

I THINK - i.e., I'm not sure - that most water miscible paints carry their fair weight in toxins - if they don't, they're going to be restricted in pigment strenggth - their advantage over regular oil paints being only that you don't use Turpentine or other spirit-based paint thinners with them.  The good news however is that you don't HAVE to use Turps or Mineral Spirits at all - it's perfectly possible to paint in oils using just Linseed oil; it's a little bit more difficult, I suppose: but not very.  And you can clean up afterwards with kitchen towel, soap and water. I used to argue with the late Murray Ince about this: he didn't use solvents because of his asthma - I told him he just didn't need to use them, but by that time he'd become something of an ambassador for the W & N Artisan brand of water miscible paint and had a vested interest in sticking with them.  His draughtsmanship was superb, but I do think his paint quality suffered - what he could do with what, to me, were inferior pigments was quite extraordinary; but - I think he could have been even more extraordinary, if he hadn't taken up that  paint. Cobra may be better than Artisan, I've not tried it. 

I clean my regular oil brushes with Fairy Liquid, quite often.  Don't need solvents.  I know I bang on about this, and actually I do use Turps - to paint with, not to clean brushes with.  But - I don't have to!