By the time the eight-week course was over, I was the wretch I am now: an unhinged woman vehemently obsessed with oil painting who wrestles with it like a feral person for hours every day. I had earth-moving revelations as I graduated from using makeup brushes to real sable, and switched from canvas to linen panels. My formerly adorable kitchen now looks as though Francis Bacon had assaulted a pope in it. I know things about linseed oil its own mother doesn’t know.
