Life , love and art don ' t always go as planned nor do they follow that straight path promised in college classes . When I graduated college my disposable income that would have gone to the finest of art materials , went to rent and transportation . I had enough extra money to buy “ oops ” paint and rejected colors of house paint at big box stores . I had several gallons and quarts in every finish from satin to eggshell . If Jackson Pollock could use it , it was good enough for me . They were bright , opaque and dried reasonably quickly . I slung , dripped and painted with latex house paint for about three years . I was in love , especially with the cost and availability of it . Then the day came when I started getting gallery representation and the elders of the art world said , ” You can ' t use house paint . It won ' t last ." I can ' t recall which evil gallery director said it first but it was what I was hearing more often . It was like a parent not impressed with the choice of a first date . It just played over and over in my head . So we broke up and I was in search of another medium . I remembered my old college sweetheart , that stuff Jasper Johns used called encaustic . I figured if it was good enough for him it was good enough for me . It was such an elusive medium , so forgotten that nobody remembered it nor knew of it . This was before Joanne Mattera had even written a book about it . R & F might have been making small batches of paint but I didn ' t know about it then . My only resource was two pages on the subject found in that 600 page handbook , “ Artist Materials .” That was good enough for me and so I was off in search of ways to melt wax .