History Paintings refer to a place over time. Gold, silver, lead, tin and bismuth are used to bring the fragility of drawing and the intimacy of writing into the picture plane and in confrontation with both the oil medium and the history of painting itself. Time and environment act on the mark-making in uncontrollable ways, often provoking new work and additional layers of painting over the course of several years. The painting continually changes over time as the metals, pigments and oils interact.