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

As a few of you know, last week I asked the advice of my artist friends whether I should continue this blog or use the time I spend writing it towards putting out a weekly newsletter. And the answer was overwhelming! Keep the blog going. Well, when I say overwhelming, I believe I got responses from three people. And that particular blog-post was one of my least read posts. But what the hell, three people want me to continue so I will! And there are probably more who were just to busy to read a Cubo-Weird blog post last week who normally would have.

Anyway, decision made and it's not the focus of this week's post. This week I've decided to talk about Marvin the Martian. A few months ago someone suggested that I should create a Cubo-Weirdist portrait of that iconic character. And I thought to myself, "that sounds like a challenge, what the hell I'll give it a shot!" Why you ask did I immediately think of it as a challenge? Well the character design of Marvin is very very simple. I mean, he doesn't even have a nose! And fewer facial features to move around and play with make Cubo-Weirdism rather difficult. But I did one that I thought was okay. I haven't posted it to social media mainly because I just thought I could do better.

^{A Very Very Angry Martian, Indeed, 11" x 14", oil on canvas, 2021.}

But what was the secret to cracking the "Cubo-Weirdist Code" of Marvin the Marian? I thought about that question for a while, and I decided that what I needed to do was think about it differently. Let's face it what I'm doing is not technically "Cubism", but since it follows in the tradition started by Picasso, I have adopted that term for my work. The original Cubists, especially Picasso went down a route towards different types of abstraction, often still involving figuration. So I decided that maybe I needed to think of Marvin in terms of taking the abstract shapes that all cartoon characters are formed out of and making them just that much more abstract. And this is the result. Which one do you like better?

^{A Very Very Angry Martian, Indeed (2), 9" x 12", oil on canvas, 2021.}

This painting of Marvin is one of the last Pop Culture based Cubo-Weirdist paintings that I've done and had not posted until today. There is one more that I'm going to post on Thursday. After that I will be posting a few of my made-up Cubo-Weirdist faces as well as animals in the coming weeks. So if you're reading this, I'll ask you this favour: could you make a point of liking, saving and sharing these posts on Instagram and liking and sharing them on Facebook? Oh and comment! Comments help the algorithm too. All of these things might help me to not lose a lot of followers over the next few weeks.

Anyway all that probably leads to a question you might have right now. Why don't I just make more Pop Icon paintings? And the answer to that is: I just feel like it's time to push myself into some different directions. I've been working on very different work for a couple of weeks, but I'm just not ready to share any of it yet. Lets just say I've been doing studies that are not for public consumption. I hope to have something to share with you before the year is out. Otherwise I do hope you enjoy the last of the Pop Icons (for now, I'm not stopping completely), and the made-up faces and animals.

One last thing: both of these painting are available for purchase. So if you're interested in either of these, send me a message here or on FB/Instagram. See you next week! Same blog time, same blog channel!