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

So first of all, I'd like to start this post by thanking TikTok for being so damned successful that it changed Instagram. Thanks a lot TikTok! Did you detect some sarcasm there? Because that sentence was dripping with it. I mention this because if it wasn't for the success of TikTok, Instagram wouldn't be so obsessed with competing with and attempting to replicate the success of that platform. But that is exactly what they're trying to do. So artist's such as myself who have had some success selling our work through Instagram can't just keep posting still images of our work and hoping the right people see them. Because lately, they just aren't seeing them. So that means, we have to make Reels, or pay for ads, but I'll talk about that in another post. Now you might be saying, "stop your complaining. How bad can it be? You still seem to be making lots of art!" Which is all true, but when I look at the Reels by other artists that do really well, there tends to be quite a lot of editing work that has gone into them. And that's not what I signed up for! [...]

In this week's Cubo-Weirdist Blog post, I thought I'd tell you a little story about an exchange I had with someone on Facebook. I've told such stories before in this here blog here, usually to–hmmm, how shall put this–to virtue signal that I can be incredibly reasonable when confronted with negativity from strangers. I once told the story of a Facebook interlocutor who commented that he hated something I did and I ended up saying just the right things to him. And lo and behold we ended up becoming FB 'friends.' But this time I thought I'd tell a story where I almost wish in hindsight that I wouldn't have been so nice to the person in question. Because that person did something much more annoying than telling me he doesn't like my work and, spoiler alert, I'm pretty sure he doesn't like my work. But fine, that's not a surprise. Everyone can't be a super fan! [...]

For the last few years most of the subject matter for my paintings has consisted of characters from famous movies and TV shows. But earlier this year I started to branch out a bit while staying in the pop culture realm. I began to do paintings of actors, comedians and musicians, many of whom are almost universally considered to be national treasures. But at some point, I also started to do a smaller series of paintings of famous people from culture culture. Here I'm referring to the art world which is generally considered to be 'culture', or 'high culture', whatever you want to call it. What I'm trying to say is, I did some paintings of famous artists. Now I suppose in the case of most of the artists I have painted the lines are kind of blurred. Artists like Dali and Warhol essentially crossed over to the world of pop culture. Especially Warhol, I mean he is the most famous of all the artists from the genre of Pop Art. And Picasso, was just plain famous. But I did start to run out of ideas for artists to paint. How many artists from the 20th and 21st Centuries are recognizable by their faces? Maybe I could do one of Georgia O'Keefe. She was a great painter and I know what she looked like! But do most people? I'm not sure… d [...]

Last week in this here Cubo-Weirdist Blog here, I wrote about my painting of Prince and how I really felt like it was a failure. And just a quick re-cap, instead of abandoning it, which is an age-old strategy for me, I decided to go back into it and see if I could make it work. And I felt that I was successful in that endeavour. What I wanted to talk about this week is the fact that that wasn't the first time I did that this year. I also did it with a painting of the great Tom Hanks as Forrest Gump. But in this case there is more to the story than the fact that the painting wasn't working, in this particular case the painting was just a bad idea. Allow me to explain. You see earlier this year I was doing a number of paintings of famous actors, comedians etc that are widely considered to be national (or international) treasure. One of those actors I was planning to paint for that series was Tom Hanks. But then I thought to myself: "maybe I should paint one of his characters. They are just so iconic." Or something to that effect. So the first one I thought of was Forrest Gump. The second one I thought of was Woody from Toy Story. Then I had what I thought was a brilliant idea. "I'll do a mash-up of both characters!" [...]

So it's the rainy season here in fabulous Winnipeg. Well, okay we don't have a rainy season. We have a cold season, a really cold season, an absolutely freezing season, followed by a cold season and then a warmish season where it gets cold again followed by three to four months of glorious warmth (with some cool days thrown in) and then a brief cool season aaand… you get the idea. But this post is not about the accursed climate here in Southern Manitoba (yup, it's the southern part of the province, you can guess how cold it is up north). But anyway, it's been unusually rainy (and snowy before that) for all of 2022, so hence I'm calling it the rainy season. And that got me thinking of Purple Rain, which I think is the title of my new painting of Prince, which you will see down below. Is that too cliché? Anyway, I can always change it if I or my one of my readers can come up with something better. Anyway, I wanted to write a little bit about the Prince painting. As you may have noticed I've been doing a series of paintings of world famous musicians, most (but not all) of whom are in the category of late/great. And Prince is no exception. He had to be painted in my Cubo-Weirdist style. [...]