Chris Simonite's Cubo-Weirdism Blog! A Blog about Chris Simonite's Art by Chris Simonite. Who the Hell else?

  Hello again from social isolation. One week since my last post, and spring has actually sprung in Winnipeg! The temperatures have been consistently above freezing and the snow and ice are disappearing. Ask me in a couple of weeks how much social distancing one can do during a flood, when you have have to help the community sandbag? I fear this is Winnipeg’s fate this spring. Note to self: don’t build a city on swamp! Okay, I didn’t build it, but I do live here! Yikes!   So this week I thought I’d talk a little about titling my work. You see, as [...]

    Princess, 2019, oil on canvas.   I write this huddled up in my bunker (okay, studio) here in Winnipeg, making sure I don’t see or talk to anyone. Wait, just making sure I don’t see anyone. Except my wife and cats. Anyway, it’s supposed to be spring here, but winter weather holds on. Who woulda thunk it in a city nicknamed “Winterpeg”?   So today I’m asking myself the question: “what should I call my new work”. As you can see on the portfolio page it’s simply titled “New Works” as of this writing. As mentioned it’s largely inspired by George Condo, so in trying to write [...]

              Last week I wrote about how my There Ain’t no Moon in the Sky series led to my Menagerie series. If you’ve been following my instagram, or looking at my New Works section here on this website, you’ll notice that my newest work doesn’t yet have a title. This new work also didn’t follow directly from the Menagerie work, although being portrait based it definitely has a connection. But I believe that the fact that I just kept painting ensured that I was going to come up with more ideas regardless. Of course, I couldn’t resist going back to the moon, [...]

Last week I talked about how my painting career was delayed by the fact that I just didn’t know what to paint. So I picked a subject—weird things happening on the moon—and just dove in head first. As I said, this was a great strategy that I recommend to anyone who doesn’t know how to get started. It turns out that one idea, even if it isn’t great, just seems to lead to more ideas. Not that doing moon paintings wasn’t a great idea. I still like it to this day!     So believe it or not, the moon paintings lead directly to [...]

So now you know that I’m a cartoonist turned painter/multi-media performance artist/sort of animator (one day I’ll post an animation!). I always knew I was going to end up being a painter, but I took a roundabout way of getting there. I only really started to doing it when I wasn’t sure what else to do. But then, not surprisingly, I got addicted.   Before I started, I had to overcome the first hurdle, that being: what the hell should I paint? A good friend of mine said “just pick a subject and start”. Solid advice. [...]