Launching of WilliamsburgOils.com blog

From the beginning Williamsburg was always known as a ‘painter’s paint.’ Partly it was because the founder of the company, Carl Plansky, was first and foremost a painter by both temperament and training. Everything he made was infused with a painter’s sense of touch and passion for color. The hours spent over a mill or mixer were in constant dialog with the hours spent in the studio. As any painter knows, at the end of the day the paint always has to ‘work’, the color has to be beautiful, the overall sense…..well, sensuous. And those criteria never came from cold concepts or rigid recipes, but from the lived experience of the paint being pushed and attended to in the studio. As the company grew, the dialog continued to expand far beyond Carl’s own paintings and practice to include the constant conversations and feedback painters provided when calling or visiting the factory and eventually to the thousands of emails and other contacts with artists that Williamsburg has had over the years.

The launching of this blog is another step in that ongoing tradition – an invitation to a dialog and discussion about the deep traditions and new discoveries that inform our craft and underlie our shared love for the materials of painting. Let us know what you think and what you are thinking about. And if you are ever in upstate New York, please visit our factory where the same mills and mixers that made Carl’s paints many decades ago are still in operation. We are always eager to hear your thoughts over a cup of coffee or, better yet, while pushing around some paint in our applications area. In the meantime, however, we want to invite you into this new space as well and to let those conversations begin to take shape.