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

I make no secret of the fact that I live in a frozen wasteland, specifically the city of Winnipeg in the province of Manitoba, Canada. Cold weather is the main thing people think about when they think of my hometown, but it's not Winnipeg's only claim to fame. In 1919 there was a general strike in this city which helped change the face of the labour movement in Canada. That is of course the most important legacy of the Winnipeg General Strike. But that is not actually the aspect of the strike that I chose to focus on for the work that I did for the exhibition inspired by the strike that took place with my collective The Frost Shield Kerfuffle in 2019 entitled Revolting. Instead I chose to focus on something that I read a few years ago all about population projections for the city of Winnipeg around the turn of the 20th Century. At that time, speculation was that Winnipeg would reach a population of 2,000,000 and the province would be 4,000,000 by the year 2000. This did not happen, but it's easy to see why they thought that. By 1919 Winnipeg was Canada's third largest city and it was booming. It is now eighth, if I'm not mistaken. As I understand it, the reason for the decline of Winnipeg and it's current status as a mid-sized North American city is that the city was hit very hard by two things. One of those was the building of the Panama canal, which meant that the trade that went through Winnipeg by rail was deeply affected, but also the Winnipeg General Strike. [...]

If you follow me here, or on social media, you'll know that in the fall of 2021, I took a break from Cubo-Weirdist Pop Culture paintings to work on something a little different. For a few weeks I worked on studies for landscapes. I wrote a blog post about this a while ago, so if you've been reading the blog you'll have seen a few samples of this work. For the most part, it wasn't for public consumption, although I did bury an image of one of these in a 10 painting 'carousel' post on Instagram yesterday. The idea, at least at first was to figure out what a 'Cubist landscape' might look like, as well as to practice painting landscapes in different styles. Ultimately it was also to make some work for Damaged Landscapes, an exhibition I'll be participating in in July. One of the things I did, of course was to research Cubist landscapes. And honestly, there is not all that much. In the end, I decided to look at these pieces a little differently and to think of what makes my portrait painting successful and translate that into landscapes. And I think the answer to that is that my portraits are interesting because they combine abstract elements with realistic elements. There is a push and pull between the abstraction and realism, between the flat areas and the rendered sections that just makes them interesting, or even fun to look at. I mean, for people who like them, that is. You know, cool people! Okay, even if you don't like them you can be cool, but I digress… [...]

The second of half of 2021 was the part of the year where I ended up taking a friends advice and pushing myself to improve my technique. I started by looking at John Singer Sargent, who is considered one of the greatest portrait painters in history. Sargent is a great subject to look at because he painted using the method known as Alla Prima, or wet on wet, which is the method that I use. Traditionally painters had painted portraits (and everything else) using a method called glazing in which thin layers of paint are applied slowly, with each layer being added only after the previous layer is dry. This is a technique that I would like to try some day and maybe one of these days I'll write a post about how I have barely dipped my toes in those waters, but back to Sargent. One of the first things I did when I decided to up my game, was to do what I called "Sorta Master Copies". This was where I would take a portrait by Sargent (and eventually other artists), do a rough sketch of it and play with it so it fits into my Cubo-Weirdist style. I really did that just to make it more fun for me. And eventually, I even did a few actual master copies, where I just tried to copy a portrait as closely as I could. Here are some examples of both. [...]

Way back in 2020–I should say "five minutes ago in 2020"–because how the hell are the years going by so fast (already I digress), I made 100+ portrait paintings and if I recall correctly, I suggested it couldn't happen in any other year. The fact was, the lock down meant more time in the studio for me. And somehow I expected things would get back to normal in 2021, and in some ways, courtesy of the vaccine they did. For example, my wife and I felt it was safe enough to get on a plane and for that matter a train. We visited friends and family in Ontario, first the London area, then Toronto and then Ottawa. It felt great to do that, and hopefully we'll be able to do more of it. But it was really the only two weeks or so that I was kept out of the studio other than a couple of other weeks my wife had off from work where we did less fun stay-in-Manitoba day trips. I've mentioned before that I often pick up work as movie extra, but for the second year in a row that didn't happen. So guess what? I made 100+ portrait paintings again! I believe the final tally is 111 and I'm not including the digital ones. Now last year in this blog I suggested that that was not likely to happen again because one of my plans was to make some larger works that would be more time consuming and that it wouldn't be all about volume. I have to confess that one of the reasons I keep making small portraits is that it allows me to post new work to social media on a regular basis. And I know I shouldn't let social media dictate what kind of work I do, but it has been working for me in the sense that it keeps me painting regularly and even results in sales. So for most of the year I kept making small to medium sized Cubo-Weirdist portraits. But finally, by the around the fourth quarter of 2021, I decided it was time to try something different, but more on that next week. [...]