Art mediums shouldn't be a boundary to creating artwork

I've been painting in oils for the past 4 years and have gone through many phases of using different mediums to make artworks. I’ve had brief run-ins with Gouache, acrylic, watercolour pencils and a few others. Up until now my deviations away from oil paint have been limited to just a few days, weeks at most. That is until the last 6 months when I stumbled on something completely different. While I haven't abandoned oil painting I've definitely been tempted to for the satisfying process of carving away at an easy cut lino sheet, then slapping some black ink on it then printing it on to any paper or card I can find around the studio at the time. 

The first time I tried it I picked up a tiny square sheet of lino from Hobbycraft and carved away at it using only a craft knife as that was the only tool I had at the time. Although I made this process incredibly tedious for myself the finished result was pretty cool and I knew I had to try some more. 

Over the past 6 months I've gathered a decent collection of tools and printing paraphernalia. I’ve come up with a variety of designs across a wide variety of subjects  from Greek Mythology, birds, cats and to be honest subjects which I wouldn't have even attempted in oil paints. This strange and unlikely deviation from my most favourite medium has made me question my entire creative practice. 

When I first started painting in oils I wanted to replicate life, paint things as they are. I had no thought whatsoever that it could be anything more than that for me, even though I would look and see a vast amount  of art online and social media I could see that meaning and narrative could play a large part in why people paint, I  still didn't think this was the case for me as an artist. And then as I do, I had an idea that could be a central theme to all of the artworks I created from then on. At first I tried to paint this idea in oils but it wasn't going very well and I was losing motivation and I had begun to think that the idea I had was rubbish and that I should just go back to painting garden scenery. If I hadn't found an alternative medium to work in, I probably would have just abandoned the idea completely. Which looking back on is actually quite sad.

Overall, I've found that I can love both oil painting and Lino printing at the same time, and that I shouldn’t view the mediums I enjoy as boundaries to making my ideas translate to a piece of artwork.