Just to clarify, for a while I thought I had to have the word “hell” in every post title, but then I went back to the beginning of this blog and realized that the first one had “damn” in it and not “hell” as I had falsely remembered. So that means going forward, it will be hell or damn. And as of today, “dammit” counts to. It’s my blog, I make the rules! I promise, I will mention it no more… On to the meat of this post. This week I thought I’d talk a little about the process I go through [...]
Since I’ve been writing about Stupidism for the last two weeks, it seems like a good time to bring up Stan Dickie. Stan Dickie is a character–an alter-ego–of sorts that developed, well by accident when I was doing my Masters of Fine Arts degree at the University of Ottawa. He happened because I was stuck. I didn’t know what to do. And when you don’t know what to do in a Visual Arts degree you start writing songs, right? I mean doesn’t everybody? Isn’t that kinda stupid? Even Stupidist, perhaps? Stan developed alongside the concept of Stupidism, and is the very first iteration of [...]
Last week I wrote about my long-standing idea for an art movement called Stupidism, and I mentioned that I had written the Stupidist Manifesto while I was in grad school. I also mentioned that one of my professors at the University of Ottawa was somewhat offended by it. But that’s not to say that there weren’t some who supported it, because there were. One of them suggested that the first draft was not about art, but my own philosophy of what Stupidism is or should be. Since my expertise was in art, I should maybe tweak it to focus on that a little [...]
Back in the 2000s, when I was an undergrad at the University of Manitoba School of Art I had an idea. And that was to start an “art movement” called Stupidism. This idea has been floating around in my head for years, so does that mean it’s a good idea? I mean, bad ones don’t stick around. Right? When I was in grad school at the University of Ottawa, I introduced the concept and thought maybe it might end up being the subject of my MFA thesis. I ended up essentially abandoning it. Fun fact: if you tell academics that “we, all [...]
As my regular reader(s) knows, I have of late been using caricature as a starting point for my pop-culture paintings rather than regular portraits. And I’m having a lot of fun with it, but I’m certainly not the greatest caricaturist in the world. I mean there are amazing ones out there. But, as I’ve written before, I do think I have a bit of a knack for it. Since I’ve never really practiced it a lot, there is definitely room for improvement. But there is one thing that drives me nuts about it. Sometimes it’s really easy to capture the ‘essence’ [...]
