Mark Golden on Paint

It seems that our Experimental line of products have both inspired some folks to investigate unique materials but also confused many others. Introducing the Experimental line of colors allowed us finally to create a path to deliver products that we’ve been investigating in our R&D labs. For years we had been showing products at various events, and especially at the College Arts Association (CAA) meeting, but not being able to provide anything but samples for these products. Finally, four years ago we committed to having these products more readily available to artists.

Several artists have raised concern that we are asking them to act as guinea pigs to evaluate whether these products will work. But in fact we know that these products will work. After evaluating the product for suitable degree of permanency, adhesion and lightfastness, we then commit resources to assuring the product will have adequate stability or shelf life. So we are confident that the products will work. What we don’t investigate, other than the artists here that get to play and work with these materials, is HOW these products will ultimately be used.

For us the determination of the Experimental category is that we hope that these materials will provide unique opportunities for artists to experiment with new materials that previously have not been available to them before. We are paint junkies here. We love to play with all the new toys. It is from this excitement and joy that we hope to continue to bring you these new products.

These products come from a much larger list of products that have been investigated by the Lab and shared with artists on our staff. Those that show promise or any interest are pursued to understand if they might safely be used in an artist’s studio environment first. That’s typically the first screen. The second screen is developing the product into a stable formula. This can take anywhere from several months to years. After evaluation by the team again for interest, the products are then evaluated for permanency, lightfastness and compatibility to many of our commonly used products. But clearly with all the ways that artists use products and the myriad of combinations that artists may try, these products have not and will not be investigated to this degree, unless of course they are going to be included within our typical product families. The other concern with these products and why they remain as experimental is that to include products within our traditional branded line, we have to be assured by raw material providers that they can provide the raw materials consistently and without variation. This evaluation takes considerable trials and would make the cost of these products even more expensive than they already are and in some cases would simply preclude us offering these products.

Our goal is truly to continue to bring you interesting materials that create unique opportunities for your experimentation. We will continue to create offerings for this Experimental group of products and hopefully we can learn to produce them even more economically so that more of you can try out these products. But we will not be willing to compromise on providing the level of service and dedication to quality that I think you expect from us. So I realize these Experimentals weren’t made for everyone. That’s fine by me. We produce more than enough products for artists to investigate without taking this leap with us to the outer edge.