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

There is one subject that I've been hesitant to write about, and that is my participation in Comic Cons, partly because I'm not sure if I want to continue to do them. A few years ago I ran into an old friend with whom I lamented that I felt like I was spinning my wheels in the art world. I had fairly recently re-invented myself as a painter after having earned my BFA and MFA in drawing, animation and live performance. Being a painter in the art world is a hard slog. There are still many people who think that painting is dead. So when I told him all this he suggested I try selling my wares at comic cons. You see this friend of mine had quit his full time job as a high school English teacher to do just that. He told me he thought I would do quite well. So I thought "why not give it a try? the art world isn't the be-all end-all."

So I did it a few times and just when it seemed that I was developing a bit of a following at these events, Covid hit. I've written about this before, but I with this new style that I've come to call Cubo-Weirdism, I really started to feel like an artist who may well belong in the (I should say so-called) art world. And I also realized that I had to raise my prices on my original paintings. They were starting to sell through Instagram and I was also in a show at a commercial gallery in New York. Yes, I was starting to get noticed by the odd gallery, so maybe I am a real art world painter!

Anyway the fact of the matter is, I'm not a major fan of comic books, but I really enjoyed doing the shows even though I wasn't making as much money at them as I would have liked. But now that I'm finding a niche selling online, I'm not 100 percent sure if I will continue to do them, as much fun as they are. But the fact is, I have a table at Winnipeg Comic Con already paid for and they just announced that they're going ahead with the show in October. So I guess I'm doing at least one more.

So why do I bring this up? Well, since I started making Cubo-Weirdist paintings, you're probably noticed that I almost always make portraits of a single character/person. That was initially because I needed to keep my prices low because of the market I was limiting myself to. But with the change in pricing etc., I've been meaning to do more paintings featuring more than a single subject. Like this one of Calvin and Hobbes! The good thing is, I did individual studies of both of these characters which I can try to sell at the con for 100 bucks each. So with the studies, I'll still have some affordable original paintings to sell if I do continue to do these kind of events.

Chris Simonite, Calvin and Hobbes, 24" x 24", oil on canvas, 2021.

One last thing, in the post-before-last I mentioned that I don't normally do studies because I like the spontaneity of working a finished painting out on the canvas. Well, I've realized that while I'm calling the studies 'studies', they are also original paintings and at a 100 bucks, they are a steal. So I think studies are a thing I will continue to do.

Chris Simonite, Study for Calvin and Study for Hobbes, both 9" x 12", oil on canvas, 2020.

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