81 books like Acrylic Revolution

My mixed media journey began as a kid growing up in a family of scientists and artists. I always loved to combine things, adding unusual objects to my mud sculptures and later mixing things up as a chemistry student. I created some wild concoctions as a bartender and then eventually as an acrylic painter. I began as a traditional oil painter, but I moved on to painting murals on walls, and cutting stones and metalwork. I introduced the other art students to some great construction sites where we would scavenge materials and give them new life. This passion led me to write six books on mixed media.

My mixed media journey began as a kid growing up in a family of scientists and artists. I always loved to combine things, adding unusual objects to my mud sculptures and later mixing things up as a chemistry student. I created some wild concoctions as a bartender and then eventually as an acrylic painter. I began as a traditional oil painter, but I moved on to painting murals on walls, and cutting stones and metalwork. I introduced the other art students to some great construction sites where we would scavenge materials and give them new life. This passion led me to write six books on mixed media.

My mixed media journey began as a kid growing up in a family of scientists and artists. I always loved to combine things, adding unusual objects to my mud sculptures and later mixing things up as a chemistry student. I created some wild concoctions as a bartender and then eventually as an acrylic painter. I began as a traditional oil painter, but I moved on to painting murals on walls, and cutting stones and metalwork. I introduced the other art students to some great construction sites where we would scavenge materials and give them new life. This passion led me to write six books on mixed media.

My mixed media journey began as a kid growing up in a family of scientists and artists. I always loved to combine things, adding unusual objects to my mud sculptures and later mixing things up as a chemistry student. I created some wild concoctions as a bartender and then eventually as an acrylic painter. I began as a traditional oil painter, but I moved on to painting murals on walls, and cutting stones and metalwork. I introduced the other art students to some great construction sites where we would scavenge materials and give them new life. This passion led me to write six books on mixed media.

I have always been a dog person. Sometimes, I think I am a dog whisperer, as I feel like the dogs in my life have always understood me, just like I understood them. They were often so human-like that I wondered what they did at the house when I was out. So, it didn’t take much of a leap to come up with the idea of “Dudley’s Day at Home,” where Dudley and his best cat pal, Buttercup, enjoy lots of human activities while Sam and his mother are away. 

I spent two years researching and creating the graphic novel Black Dog: The Dreams of Paul Nash for the 14-18Now Foundations WW1 centenary art commissions, and then touring a live permanence work evolved from the book. We grew up a few miles from each other, and he convalesced after the war where I live now, and I share his sense of place, and we appear to have shared many life experiences, with the obvious exception being his time in the trenches - that was the huge black hole I tried to understand with this work.

When I decided to write about Catherine Donohue, I searched for everything I could find about her, which was surprisingly little. I traveled to Ottawa, Illinois to read her letters held at a local historical society, and I connected with the son of her attorney, who has kindly uploaded his father’s old newspaper clippings onto the internet. The story of America’s Radium Girls is a tragic warning about where greed and corruption can lead, but it is also a story about courage, faith, and perseverance. It is a privilege to be a part of increasing awareness of their fate. After all, HERstory is history, too.

If I was asked to describe the central theme of my life's work in a phrase, it would be 'geometry in the arts'. I'm an architect originally, now a professor in London, and have always loved drawing and the art of perspective. In the 1990s I became fascinated with the idea that Johannes Vermeer used the camera obscura, an obsession that led to my book Vermeer's Camera. I'm now working on Canaletto's Camera. And I have ideas for yet another book, on perspective, to be called Points of View. I've chosen five books on these topics that I've found most thought-provoking and inspiring.

I’ve lived in cities all my adult life and currently divide my time between Paris and Philadelphia. And while those two cities are strikingly different places, they have in common the fact that they are both great walking cities –- urban centers that can be explored on foot and easily enjoyed by pedestrians. Walking cities, I believe, provide not only an ideal context for today’s tourists but also a model for a future in which urban dwellers become less reliant on automobiles and urban centers more open to foot traffic than to vehicular pollution and congestion. The books I’ll recommend deal in various ways with the building and rebuilding of visionary cities, and of Paris in particular.

What makes me passionate about this topic is my love of art, encouraged by my parents and developed when I was completing an undergraduate degree in architecture. I’m also addicted to mysteries, preferably ones with history thrown into the mix. Born in Australia, I lived for some years in the UK before moving to Canberra. I hold a PhD from the London School of Economics and I’m a professor at the Australian National University. I do hope you enjoy the books on my list as much as I have.