I grew up in an artist’s household.
Art supplies were simply part of everyday life. They were tucked into drawers, stacked on shelves and scattered around my mother’s workspace. My mother had returned to school as an adult to get her BA, and over the years she accumulated art materials from all sorts of places.
Among those supplies, I remember seeing the DEMCO label.
I never thought much about it at the time. It was simply one of the many names I encountered as a child growing up around art.
It’s funny how life works. Years later, when I became a professional artist myself, I started paying much more attention to the materials I use and where they come from.
I like buying local when I can, and DEMCO is a Canadian company. Over time, I began using some of their products in my own studio. I particularly liked their heavy-bodied paints, but I also found myself reaching for other DEMCO supplies, including fluid acrylics, paint brush cleaner, linseed oil and other studio necessities.
So when one of their representatives reached out to me recently, I was delighted.
She wanted to send me some of their new products to try, including their new EMOTIONS line of extra-fine professional acrylics.
Of course I said yes!
And then the box arrived.
Inside were several tubes of EMOTIONS paint, some Art Pro paint brushes and a couple of bottles of fluid acrylic.
I didn't spend much time admiring the packaging.
I tore open the box and started playing.
That's one of the things I love most about being an artist: the anticipation of trying something new can turn into making almost immediately. I put the paints to work, experimented with them, and before very long, I knew I liked them.
Really liked them.
I've been painting non-stop with my new supplies ever since.
There is something very satisfying about discovering a new material and finding out what it wants to do. Does the paint move the way I expect? How does it respond to my brush? How does one colour behave beside another? What happens when I layer it, push it around or let it do something I hadn't planned?
Those are the questions that keep me painting.
But there was another feeling that came with opening that box, one I wasn't expecting.
I thought of my mum.
I thought about being that little girl surrounded by her art materials, seeing the DEMCO label among them without having any idea that, one day, I would be a professional artist myself and might be opening a box of DEMCO supplies in my own studio.
For a moment, the distance between then and now didn't seem quite so great.
Somehow, I could feel her presence.
Maybe that's one of the lovely things about art materials. They are ordinary objects, really—tubes of paint, brushes, bottles and jars. But they can become part of our memories. We use them to make things, and in the process, they become connected to the people, places and moments that surround us.
My mother was part of the reason art felt so natural to me growing up. And now, all these years later, I'm still here, opening boxes of paint and getting excited about what I can make with them.
I love my job.
I love making my world a more beautiful place, and hopefully, sharing a little of that beauty with other people, too.
And I love that I can keep learning and experimenting, even after all these years.
So thank you to DEMCO for sending these new materials my way. I’m having a ball with them—and I have a feeling my mum would have enjoyed seeing what I’m doing with them, too.
Now, back to the studio.