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

Last week I discussed my social media strategy with regards to my painting of the Who and how I unveiled it over several posts. You may remember that I mentioned it didn't work. So this week I thought I'd mention another social media strategy I've been trying. This strategy has had mixed success, although lately it hasn't really been working at all. I'm talking about my "watch me play guitar in front of my paintings" reels. 

I started doing these a couple of years ago as IGTV videos. I liked the IGTV videos because I could play entire songs and I miss that. But lately I've just been playing the guitar solos to famous songs which is also fun. You work with what you have. When I started doing these I put my painting on my easel, put on a backing track and played along in front of it. Some of them did pretty well. Nowadays, I've become more savvy with the tools available in Instagram. I now play in front of a green screen of my painting. Some good examples would be the ones of all the Beatles songs I've done in the last year. 

The first three of these did quite well. They didn't exactly go viral but they did get thousands of plays. But then, suddenly, they didn't. There seems to be no rhyme or reason for it. The ones for Get Back, Something and Let it Be did really well. Shortly after that I did my very favourite one. That would be the solos for The End from Abbey Road. On that song, John, Paul and George traded short little solos that overlap each other. You don't see a lot of people playing them all together in one take. I mean, you do, but you but most of the YouTube videos you'll find will be people playing them all individually and showing them on separate screens. My point is I was pretty proud of it, but it tanked on social media.

Now I've had friends tell me that they think showing this side of myself can only help with promoting my work. People get some small insight into my life outside of painting. I've also had quite a bit of success in selling my paintings of musical superstars lately. My paintings of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, Jimi Hendrix, David Bowie and Neil Young all sold at Art Expo. I've also done a commission for a painting of Amy Winehouse for someone who I met at Art Expo. Note to self–make a video of me singing like Amy Winehouse! Ha ha! Jokes! So it seems like my most popular work, at least in my hometown is paintings of famous singers and musicians. Which is great, because I love making them.

So this brings me to a painting I did recently and a video I have to make. This one is not someone who is primarily known for being a musician, though he is a singer/songwriter. I'm talking about the international treasure that is Eric Idle. I needed to do a painting of Mr. Idle. The thing that pushed me to finally make it, was the fact that I wanted to do a video playing and singing Always Look on the Bright Side of Life. The closing number from one of the greatest comedy movies ever made, Monty Python's Life of Brian. 

Always Look on the Bright Side of Life, 11" x 14", oil on canvas, 2022. Available.

So I had to paint him on the Crucifix. And that got me thinking about all the people the Romans Crucified and that nobody painted! I mean, history tells us that the Romans crucified a lot of people but nobody ever paints anyone but Jesus. And Brian, at least in my case. So by painting Eric Idle as Lead Singer Crucifee, I did a painting of one of the other schleps that was crucified. And it seemed like a good tribute to all those nameless people of Judea who were subjected to that horrible, tortuous death. I hope they were able to look on the bright side of being up there until the crows ate their eyes. Anyway, look for the reel coming soon on my Instagram feed! And also have a look at some of the other ones. Also the IGTV ones are still there! See you next week!