Artist’s Block and Embarrassing Works

When there is nothing I want to draw or when I’m uninspired, sometimes I just draw something I would define as incredible stupid. It might be incredibly stupid to me, but from the audience’s perspective, it could just be as stupid as my other pieces. This piece is based on an alligator in Texas with a knife stuck on its head. It was all over twitter a couple of weeks ago and seemed like a good subject outside of anything that had any personal meaning to me.

The good thing about drawing something that I personally don’t have any emotional investment in or something absent of any deeper message is that it ends up lasting longer and doesn’t come out as cringe-worthy after a few years. There are quite a few old drawings, that when I look at them now, they can be quite embarrassing. I’m sure this is true of all artists. Much like old Myspace or Friendster pages, naivety in art is embarrassing and doesn’t age well. It reeks of first year art school. This is why most popular art has ambiguous meanings or none at all. This is also why political art, when it becomes popular or when they rise to high art, they are truly done by masters.

As an artist that does small works, this is where I have an advantage over others who work on large canvasses. My embarrassing work can be stuffed in a bag and kept in a small closet somewhere. Heck, I can even put them in the recycling bin. They are not large works, taking up space in my life, reminding me of what a hack I was a few years (or months) ago.

So yeah, do small works, folks! Or at least think of long term storage whenever you make art.

Art Forgery Drama

There is an interesting documentary on the works of the late Norval Morrisseau, ‘There Are No Fakes’. Morrisseau started the Woodland style of painting, using imagery from First Nations cultures showing the insides of creatures in a sort of x-ray effect.  His works are far more colorful and playful compared to the more traditional images in Inuit and West Coast art.

Unfortunately, many of his works have been forged, and a lot of what is passing off as original Morrisseaus could potentially be fakes made by an art forgery ring. I’m not sure if the documentary will show anything past what has already been detailed when I first learned about the Morrisseau forgery in Maclean’s last year, but what interested me was the very title of the film, ‘There Are No Fakes.’

Is it because somehow Morrisseau’s family was connected to the forgeries? Or is it because the forgeries themselves, just by the very fact that they are connected to the drama of Morrisseau and his legacy make them valuable on their own? Or does the documentary basically say that if you love an image and that you find it beautiful, you shouldn’t really care about its authenticity or its monetary valuable. That art is art. They are not objects to be traded or treated as real estate investments. They are far bigger than that. (I sincerely doubt that this is where the film will go.)

The leader of the forgery ring, Gary Lamont, was sentenced to jail back in 2016 for being a sexual predator. I’m not sure if many of the news media at the time mentioned his involvement with producing forged Morrisseaus, but according to one of the victims, the forged pieces represent a very abusive period. Gary Lamont would manipulate and abuse young men while the works were being produced, between 1993-2007, when there was increased demand for Morrisseaus and when the artist’s health was slowly declining.

I’m sure there are still more to this story, right now galleries and owners are still insisting on the authenticity of many works, but I do hope that the worst is over, and at the very least, no one is producing more forged works. Growing up in Manitoba, I remember seeing some of Morrisseau’s works and even more works inspired by him. After learning about the forgeries last year, I’m not even sure if I’ve ever seen a real Morrisseau.

What Use is 5G?

I’m old enough to remember when work doesn’t have to involve the Internet. The Internet connection in my office is currently inconsistent, and work grinds to a halt.

I remember a few months ago when a fire damaged the phone tower near my place; and the Internet and phone lines were down for 24 hours. Initially, I was wandering the street, trying to find answers to why I can’t contact the outside world. I was asking strangers what was happening. Many of them didn’t have answers. It was a weird feeling, not being able to contact anyone by phone, not even the police. The CCTV cameras were all useless as well. It was like a great time for a purge-type of scenario.

Many of the stores I went to would only take cash. The restaurants wouldn’t feed me as well because their card readers couldn’t connect to the Internet. Hard cash was vital again. We were thrown back to the 80s.

Eventually, my wife and I sorted out what happened through word of mouth (you know, like they used to do back when people were curing diseases with leeches), and she spent the night knitting and listening to the radio. It was like we were at a bomb shelter.

I could list all of the things as to why the Internet has become so vital to our everyday existence, but that list would encompass almost everything. Heck, it swung the election in many countries, most significantly the US! But yeah, right now, our dependence on it is making me waste my day as I type this entry on my Website to be posted at a later time when I finally get a consistent connection.

The goddamned country is leading the world in 5G connectivity, and yet the genius IT people in my building can’t get their act together.