Oil Paintings/ Volume 129

There are mediums that record an image. And there is oil — a medium that records time.

We chose oil for our Special Edition not because it needs rediscovery, but because it refuses to be forgotten. In an era of instant images, oil remains defiantly slow. It asks to be mixed, layered, glazed, scraped, revisited. It dries the way ideas dry — slowly, changing as it does. That is its power.

When we think of its lineage, we think of endurance. We think of the luminous patience of Van Eyck, building light with glazes so thin they seem to breathe. Of the theatrical darkness of Caravaggio and Gentileschi, carving drama from shadow with chiaroscuro. Of Rembrandt’s skin, which is never just skin, but a map of a life. Later, of the broken touch of Impressionism — Monet dissolving cathedrals into atmosphere — and then the fearless gesture of de Kooning, Richter, and Saville, who proved that oil could be as violent and contemporary as any medium born yesterday.

And yet, for all its history, oil is not a historical medium. It is a living one.

For this Special Edition, Volume 129, Collect Art launched an international open call dedicated exclusively to oil painting. We did not ask for a style. We asked for an engagement. We wanted to see how artists today wrestle with this ancient, alchemical mixture of pigment, linseed, and time. The response came from every continent, from studios large and small, from painters rooted in rigorous classical realism and those working at the edge of abstraction, from figurative storytellers to those who let oil meet cold wax, ash, resin, and other materials. What unites them is not a single aesthetic, but a belief: that the hand still matters. That surface matters. That a painting can hold time in a way a screen cannot. In these pages, you will find paintings that are quiet and paintings that shout. Paintings that took months to build in translucent layers, and paintings made in one furious, alla prima session. Each is proof that oil continues to evolve — not by abandoning its past, but by carrying it forward.

Oil painting, with its history, its slowness, its depth, feels like the perfect emblem for that journey. Thank you to every artist who answered this call and trusted us with their work. You have shown us that this timeless medium is not timeless because it is old. It is timeless because it is still becoming.