It's the dish soap.

It does feel like every time I get a flareup I find a new solution, but this one seemed important enough to share.

Every time I oil paint my hands get terrible and I blame the paint. Recently I realized I'm an idiot - it's not the paint, it's the excessive washing with dish soap I do during the process to get the paint off my hands.

Dish soap is very different than a gentle hand (unscented, sls-free, etc) hand soap because it is specifically made to break up fats on your dishes (which is why it also works well on oil paint). So even if you have an environmentally-friendly, fragrance-free dish soap, it's still going to break down the oils on your hands.

I will be more vigilant at not using it even on occasion, and thought I would share with you too in case you also didn't think the occasional use would be a problem.

My hands are slowly getting their natural oils back and ezema dying down but it has taken a few weeks and still needs time.