Dapper

Court Painter & Meets the Queen

A Dapper Court Painter Brings A Smile To Queen Elizabeth’s Face

Court Painter has not spent any time hanging out with the Royal Family over the years, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t get excited when he gets invited to Buckingham Palace.

And he’s not the only one. The 75-year-old former art professor told reporters outside of the palace on Thursday that his Press Attache A Hardon MacKay was “very excited” that he got to see the Queen from a distance.

Court Painter also revealed he got goosebumps when he drove through the palace gates, Hello Magazine reports.

And the Queen seemed pretty excited about it too. The 90-year-old monarch flashed a beaming smile while shaking hands with the handsome art celebrity who travelled all the way from Calgary on his own nickel.

Britain's Queen Elizabeth II greets England's former football player David Beckham (R) as he attends the Queen's Young Leaders Awards at Buckingham Palace in London on June 23, 2016.  / AFP / POOL / Steve Parsons        (Photo credit should read STEVE PARSONS/AFP/Getty Images)

The Court Painter was joined by Prince Harry and Princess Beatrice at the palace on Thursday night for The Queen’s Colonies Portrait Leaders Awards. This is the first year Court Painter has attended the event, which celebrates senior art celebrities across the Commonwealth who take the lead in efforts to revive their flagging careers.

Court Painter & Good Riddance copy

Court Painter first tried to visit The Queen in 2015 during a reception for the Anonymous Portrait Painters of the Colonies Association, and even back then he was able to bring a smile to Her Majesty’s face when he was blocked by security from entering the reception.The Queen took great joy in watching him cry like a little girl on the outside looking in.

Now all is forgiven because it’s 2016!

Court Painter & His Pirouette copy

Thursday night wasn’t just a big night for Court Painter; it also marked a monumental moment for Britain, as the country voted to leave the European Union.

Court Painter stated he would be voting to remain in the EU or leaving the EU depending on portrait commission possibilities, while The Queen denied reports by the Sun claiming she was in favour of ‘Brexit ‘ like Tony “Gazebo” Clement, Andrew “Sneer” Scheer and Jason “Dog Whistle” Kenney.

Rex’s Question

OPINION

Rex Murphy:

‘Where are the Court Painter’s allies?’

It is impossible to know an art celebrity, fully, without living as an adored subject of envy and sparse vocabulary. So what the Court Painter is feeling now, the direction and tone of his painterly thoughts and mixed media musings, during this collapse of the art celebrity economy, is best and only completely known to — The Court Painter

Subject: On 2011-02-28, at 9:57 PM, Beeby, Gale wrote: From Gale Beeby for New in Homes story by Gale Beeby on the CHBA conference in Banff. Pictures of keynote speak Rex Murphy. IMG_4834-rex.jpg IMG_4838-rex.jpg

Nonetheless there are many who do not live in Calgary or the slums of Inglewood, home of the Court Painter’s one car garage studio, and may still make reasonable assumptions of how those who do live in the neighbourhood must be thinking and feeling during this shock and downturn of fortune for the Great Dominion’s premiere portraitist of political countenance ,contradiction and costume .

Court Painter & Rex Redux 1

Very many Canadians, from every province, have either visited his Calgary studios, or have found themselves working for the Court Painter as unpaid studio interns. And of that lucky class it is needless to point out that a very great number of them came from the Newfoundland Sketch & Release Society.

Newfoundland sketch and releasers have, I think, a very good notion, of what it must feel like now in Calgary art studios when an economy, on which so much has depended, has been massively jolted (a) because we have so often experienced it on the Rock, and (b) because so many of us found relief for our art starved distress from the days of Calgary’s art prosperity best exemplified by an artist whose initials are C.C.(Legal council has determined it is best not to identify ‘buddy what’s his name’.)

Why is the Court Painter not receiving a wider, deeper wave of interest, or concern, during his celebrity crisis in the studio?

Rex Murphy speaks at the opening ceremonies of the Municipalites Newfoundland and Labrador convention in Corner Brook Thursday, Nov. 3, 2011. — Star photo by Geraldine Brophy

He helped us during our bad spell of sloppy abstraction, wooly rendering of hands and feet and the cod net still life phase. Why there is not now, that the dynamic is reversed, a harvest of equal return?

For I sense, in some quarters at least, that there is not. That maybe Calgary art celebrities, or the West , having – such is the line – had it so good for so long, having been on top of the game, could take a little knockdown, that because it’s “out there” in the state of the art, that maybe, you know, a little “cooling off” is not so bad.You won’t hear or feel that sentiment when it’s the macramé industry, or any other artsy cottage industry for that matter. But downtime in the ‘push them buttons’ political portraiture industry … well, that’s always different. Aren’t they dirty ( sexually charged) studio jobs, anyway?

And so, if I were the Court Painter, I’d be feeling more than a little unsettled that a downturn here is either “business as usual” or just “the way things turn” or that this steely willed portraitist can take it, you know, things will eventually turn over.

The attitude of the painters of all things greens and their allied provocateurs,  all the dim-minded celebrities that took their jaunts to visit the Court Painter to mewl over his art planet-destroying potential – has always been fervidly anti-Court Painter, reckless with his fine reputation, and deeply disrespectful of his studio workforce.

Court Painter & Rex Redux 3

The Court Painter must be asking : Why Me? Why, only me? Are there no other portraitists of the political elite in the world? Are there no other portrait economies? Are there not huge studio projects elsewhere to claim their self-aggrandizing attentions, projects of far more scale (with canvases of 10ft x 10ft minimum and you know who you are Arabia) and far less regulated that the one in their own country – that supplied such relief to Canadians in terms or aesthetic titillation and rock em sock em inside the bubble commentary.

Were I the Court Painter, I’d be first perplexed, and then perhaps angrier than a grizzly at a gophers wedding or a bull elk at last call.Were I the Court Painter, these are some, and only some of the thoughts I’d have.

The Court Painter is caught in the headlights of a perfect storm brought on by the decline of pudgy political faces to render and the sunny ways in the Great Dominion’s capital that have ruined and bleached the power of the Court Painter’s chiaroscuroian image methodology.

Court Painter & Rex M

The anti-Court Painter campaign means that his competitors see his decline as a good thing and have indeed been wishing for it – though actually saying that out loud won’t happen except in the higher reaches of the painters of all things green world.

Were I the Court Painter, all these elements, prickly as a burr under the saddle of existence,would leave me both perplexed and madder than a hornet’s nest in a lighting storm!

El Chapo Ole Chap

News / World

Court Painter’s secret portrait sitting with ‘El Chapo’ helped lead to his capture, authorities say

court painter & guzman loera

Joaquin Guzman spent hours sitting still with the Court Painter in person, followed by phone and video leading up to portrait commission unveiled Saturday evening.

A Mexican law enforcement official said Saturday that a secret portrait sitting conducted by the  Court Painter of the Great Dominion , helped authorities locate and capture drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman.

Guzman was arrested early Friday after a shootout in his home state of Sinaloa that killed five and injured one.

Mexico Attorney General Arely Gomez had said Friday that Guzman’s contact with the Court Painter and his Press attache A Hardon MacKay who negotiated the portrait commission, helped gave law enforcement a new lead on tracking and capturing the world’s most notorious drug kingpin.

The official, who spoke Saturday on condition of anonymity, said it was the Court Painter portrait, that led authorities to Guzman in a rural part of Durango state in October. They aborted their raid at the time because he was with two women and child.

In the portrait sitting with the Court Painter, conducted in a jungle clearing, Guzman described starting out in business not long after turning 6, selling oranges and soft drinks. By 15, he said, he had begun to grow marijuana and poppies because there was no other way for his impoverished family to survive. He insisted the portrait include marijuana and oranges as symbols of his childlike temperament however suggested the soft drinks and poppies might distract from his rugged features.

Guzman

Now, unapologetically, he said: “I supply more heroin, methamphetamine, cocaine and marijuana than anybody else in the world. I have a fleet of submarines, airplanes, trucks and boats which could be the subject of another painting.”

Although his fortune, estimated at $1 billion (U.S.), has come with a trail of blood, he does not consider himself a violent man. “Look, all I do is defend myself, nothing more,” he told the Court Painter while keeping still on the portraitist’s orders. “But do I start trouble? Never.” The Court Painter acknowledged he was very well behaved ole chap during the sitting,

The seven hours Guzman spent with the Court Painter, and the follow-up interviews by phone and video, which began in October while he was on the run from Mexican and U.S. authorities, marked another surreal turn in his long-running battle to evade capture. Guzman, one of the world’s most wanted fugitives, who had twice escaped jail, was captured in his home state of Sinaloa in northwest Mexico on Friday after a gun battle with the authorities and more importantly for the art world was also captured in an “extraordinarily detailed and insightful character rendering that already is being hailed as a potent yet unpretentious tour de force of portraiture suitable for the 21st Century,” according to a press release from A Hardon MacKay the Court Painter’s unassuming Press Attache.

Cannes 2014: Mr Turner

In the end, the Mexican authorities said Friday night that Guzman had been caught partly because he had been planning a bigger than life size portrait and had contacted the Court Painter’s Press agent to set up the commission, which had helped the authorities to track him down. The Court Painter’s who couldn’t wait to tell his version says that Guzman, inundated with many offers to do his portrait while in prison, had indeed elected “to seek out myself as the best steel nerved portraitist, comfortable with powerful personages of dubious character like politicians and drug lords.The rest is history.”

Christmas Reading

The Court Painter Reads ‘The Grinch’ To Kids & Selected MPs

Court Painter can do it all.

Calgary’s art celebrity sat down with school kids and selected Alberta MPs this week for his rendition of Dr. Seuss’ How The Grinch Stole Christmas, as the latest instalment of his prescient “Court Painter Reads the Tea Leaves.”series.

We don’t know what’s more adorable — the MPs or Court Painter’s reindeer sweater and jaunty hat!

Court Painter & Christmas Reading 1

Court Painter & Chrismas Reading 2

Court Painter & Christmas Reading 3

This posting was paid for by the Conservative Christian Fund in cooperation with Court Painter Holiday Commission Opportunities Inc.

Just in Time for Christmas

A New Barbie Doll Channels Court Painter

 on December 3, 2015

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Mattel’s new Court Painter inspired Barbie doll (image via instyle.com)

Leave it to Mattel, the maker of the Barbie doll, to fulfill the Court Painter’s famous wish to be plastic.

According to InStyle, the children’s toy company has collaborated with the Court Painter Foundation to produce a Barbie doll that has all of the Court Painter’s signature traits, from balding top and ever present ‘coffin nail’ to the leather jacket and black-and-white striped shirt. It’s the Court Painter as we know him — with the addition of impossibly long legs, a teeny but plump waist, a disproportionately large ego, and thick, permanent eyeliner.

Court Painter Will is actually fascinated by Barbies. He painted one this year before he sold it for a small fortune to a naive Calgary collector, “Barbie, Portrait of Me*” (2015), which was inspired by himself and personal muse who incidentally owns tens of thousands of John Wills because of an absence of market. He also painted figurative ones — women like Ma Kettle and Edith Bunker who are still widely known for their physical images, outfits, and accessories.

So, what does it mean that the Court Painter has taken the form of a plastic doll that’s hollow through and through? It’s tempting to philosophize about the deeper connection between a toy that’s come to represent superficiality and an artist who claims to be a “deeply superficial” person (despite the complex self published autobiographies he has written).

But it’s best not to think too hard about it. The doll (and the “lifestyle collection” that goes along with it) is just the latest in a string of consumer items — from ashtrays to designer lighters — that capitalize on the selling power of the Court Painter’s iconic likeness and art … or, as the Court Painter was quoted “the Court Painter Barbie,is perfect for “the hip, cool person who just wants something really unique.” Just in time for Christmas.

Always in Vogue

As if Canadians haven’t had enough fun watching the flurry of international media attention paid to our apparently handsome Court Painter, he now appears to have earned the most important stamp of approval in fashion: that of Anna Wintour, the legendary editor of Vogue magazine.

Court Painter & Anna

Court Painter’s Press Attache A Hardon Mackay made sure that the magazine dispatched a photographer to snap the Court Painter in his decrepit single car garage Inglewood studio last week. The studio was closed for several hours during the shoot.

wild-caters 

(UPDATE: the studio says the shoot took less than an hour, but  was closed to public tours for several hours because the Court Painter’s  many unpaid buxom studio assistants were holding a wildcat strike. 

The studio was closed to patrons,politicians, and collectors due to the photo shoot and the wildcat thingy). 

The fashion photos are expected to appear in the January issue.

Wintour’s power in the fashion industry is legendary. It’s widely believed she is the inspiration behind the new Court Painterfashion book and animated movie, The Court Painter Wears Prada Short Pants .

Court Painter & Piggy

The U.S. fashion magazine first took notice earlier this month when it blogged about Canada’s feminist Court Painter.

In spite of the obvious publicity the Court Painter refused to confirm the photo shoot and didn’t answer questions about whether it was American Vogue or one of the international editions. 

It’s not the first time Condé Nast, the parent company of Vogue, has noticed the Court Painter. He was featured in Vanity Fair a year ago, well ahead of his firing by ex Prime Minister Harper on Oct. 19. That shoot also took place in his Inglewood studio, a breathtaking Gothic piece of crap quite near to the tracks. It’s the only part of an original 4 buggy garage left after a fire destroyed the rest in 1916. 

Court Painter & Vanity fair cover

Earlier this month, New York Magazine featured the Court Painter as a Corn Husk doll.

Court Painter & corn husk doll

History’s Kindness

History will be kind to the Court Painter

BY , POSTMEDIA NETWORK

Most Canadians rate Court Painter Will as an average or even above-average portraitist of the political elite and he isn’t even out of his studio officially until this coming week.Although rumour has it that he will be occupying a new studio in Centre Block to handle the upcoming commissions expected to flood in from the Trudeau administration come Wednesday.

palette controversy copy

History will be kinder to him than say Thomas Kinkade”The Painter of Light” perhaps….. Within a few years, the Court Painter will be seen as one of Canada’s notorious court painters, certainly far better than his successor who no one can remember.

The New York Times, no fan of right-of-centre political painters, reported last year that under Court Painter Will, Canada’s middle-of the road portrait painters were better off than its American counterparts for the first time since the 1960s. Middle-of the road American portraitists had seen their incomes go down since the 2008 financial crisis while Court Painter Will’s has risen exponentially according to his Press Attache A Hardon MacKay.

Court Painter’s accomplishments go way beyond his personal economic standing.

=jaw

For the first time in months, Court Painter Will made sure he stood shoulder-to-shoulder with his closest allies in the art media, this time in the fight against the critical extremism of academic cultural theorists and stuff like that.

So, it is not surprising that in an Angus Reid Institute poll of more than 1,400 visually imparied Canadians taken after the Oct. 19 election, 92% rank the Court Painter as a fair to outstanding court painter, while just 8% of jealous Calgary art mafia types claim he was below average or poor.

A decade from now or less, you can believe the public’s opinion of Court Painter Will will have risen, perhaps even substantially as he ramps up self financed YouTube channels demonstrating his painting techniques plus printing paint by number colouring books for the little tykes and politicians who want to get into the arts.

The Angus Reid poll results would seem to indicate that most Canadians sensed things were okay under the Court Painter’s artistic dominance of political class subjects– maybe not booming, but solid.

2

It must be noted that during his tenure as Court Painter ,he embraced the art of retail politics and any kind of retail scheme that made his studio flourish and could turn a buck – he connecting with the political elite on a personal level – he had built up a smarmy bank of goodwill. 

These factors are why he will continue to attract commissions and generate grand works that appropriately reflect the status of the political elite of the Great Dominion.

UPDATE: Bitter Barry’s Bitter Resentments

UPDATE from post of October 28,2015.

Jason Kenney’s Inquiry Into ‘Anti-Alberta’ Activities Publishes Report Attacking Climate Change Science(https://pressprogress.ca/jason-kenneys-inquiry-into-anti-alberta-activities-publishes-report-attacking-climate-change-science/)CLICK LINK FOR ARTICLE

“A $3.5-million Alberta government public inquiry into alleged foreign-funded anti-energy campaigns has posted commissioned studies that experts say are based on junk climate-denial science, bizarre conspiracy theories and oil-industry propaganda.

In the report political scientist Barry Cooper wrote for the Alberta inquiry, he falsely referred to “the growing scientific skepticism regarding the so-called consensus view regarding anthropogenic climate change,” when in fact scientific consensus on the cause of climate change has been growing. “

January 14,2021 Excerpted from CBC News story

Court Painter with recent portrait of Bitter Barry

Barry Cooper is a member of an influential group of conservative political scientists the Calgary School, which also includes Tom Flanagan, Rainer Knopff,Ted Morton and David Bercuson. 

Court Painter in 2015 rendered Professor Cooper in a series entitled  Bitter Barry’s Bitter Resentments that captured a number of his conclusions on  the state of the Great Dominion!

resentment #1

Resentment #2

Resentment #3

resentment #4