single tube

potboiler: oil on board 7"x5"

Tubes of paint (oil paint) have always had an allure for me. In my adolescent years, when most of my mates were staring longingly at the unobtainable girls, I was doing the same, but in addition I had a secret vice; I lusted after tubes of paint. Not just any old paint - I had standards. You could keep your cheap, plastic topped, skinny, gaudily wrapped tubes (they would do if there was nothing else!). What I wanted was a voluptuous, full, partially wrapped, artist quality tube.
At weekends I would take a bus into the city and visit the art gallery. I loved the Pre Raphaelites, Stanley Spencer, George Clausen, any Post Impressionists that happened to be showing but I lingered longer over the Sickert paintings - something about the low light, de-saturated gobbets of real live paint. After a few hours of being followed about the galleries by bored, officious (don't touch the paintings!) security men I would head off to Boots chemist (not for them!). In those days (1966) Boots sold oil paint; racks of it. All of it out of my price range (6d) They sold them in sets of three in orange boxes all lined up like a beauty contest. The names were exotic. Alizarin crimson, Rose Madder, Prussian Blue, Naples Yellow! After feasting my eyes long enough to get the sales assistants curious, I would pick up a tube of the most expensive red and, acting my head off in a bid to convince the staff I might buy, I would unscrew the small metal top and sniff the contents. Heady perfume! If I felt brave enough I would craftily squeeze a bit of the paint into the palm of my hand as I replaced the cap for viewing later in the daylight. If anybody riding the same bus home  noticed me, I wonder what they made of the 14 year old boy staring intently at the stigmata on his hands?
To this day I love that smell. And ogling pure colour. My ardor hasn't waned for the pliable full bodied tube- and I paint them as others paint their mistress.