[caption id="attachment_1524" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="Some of these paints are middle aged!"]
[/caption]About 35 years ago when I was an art student in East Berlin at the Kunsthochschule Weissensee, I painted with oil paints. At that time, in the 1970s, it was impossible to buy acrylics in the GDR (German Democratic Republic). I suspect that there was a shortage of raw materials that made plastics. Thus there were absolutely no plastic bags (people used cotton bags) and there was very little product packaging using plastic. It's funny that now, 35 years later, we are trying to reduce our oil-dependancy by scaling down plastics usage.
In that land of socialism, university tuition was free and art students received a monthly stipend to live on. The rent on my little apartment was capped at 8% of my monthly stipend.
