Category: Images

With : A Hardon MacKay Press Attache to the Court Painter
 Images taken during recent contract negotiations

The Court Painter’s successful artistic career is not close to being over. His last, great portraits of Wildrose MP Derek Fildebrant were, true to form, exactly what we would have expected from the Great Dominion’s preeminent portraitist of the political crass.


Court Painter speaks about his successes, and not his failures. He lovingly talks about his celebrity, but shows little emotion with a drink in his hand. He doesn’t get into the past, but speaks about the positive future for his studio and the Canadian political portrait movement.
To anyone who knows him, this isn’t a big surprise.
Court Painter has always been a professional, and not a populist painter. He has a set structure for palette, paint handling ,lighting and pricing. This is his comfort zone — he plays it close to the smock and sees absolutely no need to change anything.
Fair enough.
The shame of it is, there are still many mysteries surrounding this Court Painter. Great books about the Court Painter’s celebrity life and career have yet to be written to lift the veil of mystery and scandal. Much remains hidden beneath his paint encrusted smock and leather hat.

I continue to add to the fond memories of my  boss. Like other studio members and various inner circle riff raff over the years, we continue witnessing private studio romps that are rather captivating in nature. There are times that I wish he would let down his guard, if but for a fleeting moment, to let others see what we usually saw.(Photos and videos available upon request for a small fee+ handling and shipping+ the signing of a confidentiality agreement)
For example, Court Painter has a great sense of humour but poor timing.
While he often presents himself as a stoic and serious artistic intellectual, he is quite pitifully funny behind the scenes in his decrepit Inglewood studio. He cracks jokes cribbed from a dog eared 50’s off colour joke book about everything from world events to naughty mishaps at the Ship & Anchor pub. He would do bad impressions every so often of his nemesis Chris Cran ( catching perfectly Cran’s lisp and bow legged gait) and, out of nowhere, throw in a sudden bit of light-hearted banter that eased the tension after firing yet one more leggy studio intern.
Alas, he rarely likes to show this side of himself in public. His rants rarely contain many jokes, and he would regularly bomb trying out humorous lines and ill conceived knock knock jokes that were usually about knockers and not fit for mixed company.
I know this from personal experience.

Alas,one likely doesn’t believe a professional portraitist of the Great Dominion’s political pontificators should act in such a manner. Yet, humour has worked remarkably well for some artists (Chris Cran’s fashion sense and one liners).I don’t think it would hurt Court Painter’s image in the slightest to just lighten up a bit in public.
Court painter also enjoys talking about art, music ,pole dancing and other forms of culture. While some people claimed he is vehemently opposed to the arts community, nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, Court Painter is always interested in learning more about great imposters, painters of fakes and dime store novelists, among other things that touch on the filthy and mundane.
Court Painter is also a great fan — along with myself — of reruns of Tugboat Annie. We faithfully watch this show together each week, and enjoy the historical, political, scientific and intellectual aspects contained in it. He even had a bit role in one episode in which he was Tugboat Annie’s love interest.
Meanwhile, there’s a warm, welcoming nature to Court Painter’s character that is mostly hidden from the public eye.

He has faith in my unpaid Press Attache and chief strategist abilities,”you da man” he often says. I am included in studio clean up policy discussions, debates about who picks up the morning coffee, and bar chats about hockey legends. He is always interested in hearing about a good exhibition catalogue and articles that include him — and often asks me to read them out loud and expound on them which always begins with reading his resume. He would listen faithfully to my thoughts and ideas, even though he ultimately didn’t use any of them….ever!
For a man who doesn’t have many close confidants, these moments were to be treasured.
My hope is, one day, the Court Painter will create a self illustrated graphic novel and spill the beans on what is an unending sordid story of debauchery at the highest level of the Great Dominion’s arts and political upper echelon. There are many great censored tales still left to be told. I just hope he includes me in one naughty tale!

Rebuilding Court Painter’s studio will take work, says Preston Manning


“We asked Canadians what’s most important to you about the Court Painter on a scale of one to 10?” said Manning, the former leader of the Reform Party.
“Honesty, transparency, empathy, character and a new studio trumped everything else. And I think there’s a lesson in that, not just for the Conservatives, but for every political party who love artists like the Conservative Party. That you can have good brush work, fine rendering skills and paintings that look like they took a lot of time, but if you don’t appear to have those characteristics and inspire trust in the resale value and fair commission fees, the rest almost doesn’t matter.”

The task of rebuilding the Court Painter’s studio is a momentous one, Manning acknowledged, and it will require coming up with building code alternatives beyond just the fiscal management that right-of-centre non objective painters tend to emphasize. The same is true of everybody who is anybody including that southern neighbour Tea Party guy the former Speaker of the House Andrew Sheer introduced as a great supporter of conservative values along with Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio.Anyway lets not digress!
“What’s a constructive alternative on good drawing, fine brushwork and well chosen schmoozing of subjects which are the three biggest areas of the portrait business if you’re in a position of being the Court Painter,” he said. “And what’s your alternative on the sales and commission fee environment?”

Manning also addressed the rise of populist artists like Chris Cran, saying there’s a danger in promoting an artist simply because he is the polar opposite of the Court Painter in looks, manners, value on the dollar and celebrity look alike Buzzfeed hits.
“A little bit like in Banff, (which) went looking for the opposite of Grizzly Adams and got A Hardon MacKay.”


Translation by Johnne. A. Wille  Jr. from Iowa patois

The artistic man, who, blasé though he may be, has no occupation in life but to chase along the highway of happiness, the man nurtured in luxury, and habituated from early youth to being obeyed by others, the man, finally, who has no profession other than talent and elegance, is bound at all times to have a facial expression of a very special kind. The Court Painter embodies an ill-defined social attitude as strange as duelling; it goes back a long way, since Caesar, Catilina, Alcibiades provide us with brilliant examples of it; it is very widespread, since Chateaubriand found examples of it in the forests and on the lake-sides of the New World and now the backwaters of Inglewood Alberta. He is like an institution outside the laws of aesthetics, has a rigorous code of painterly laws that he is strictly bound by, however ardent and independent his exemplary individual character may be.

A being such as the Court Painter has no other status but that of cultivating the idea of beauty in his own person, of satisfying his passions, of feeling and thinking. Thus he possess’, to his hearts’ content, and to a vast degree, both time and money, without which fantasy, reduced to the state of ephemeral reverie, can scarcely be translated into action. It is unfortunately very true that, without leisure and money, portrait painting can be no more than an orgy to the common man and woman, or the accomplishment of a cultural duty. Instead of being a sudden impulse full of ardor and reverie, it becomes a distastefully utilitarian affair.

If I speak of celebrity in the context of the Court Painter, the reason is that celebrity is the natural occupation of men of artistic leisure. But the Court Painter does not consider celebrity as a special aim in life. If I have mentioned fame, the reason is that fame is indispensable to those who make an exclusive cult of their passions, but the Court Painter does not aspire to fame and wealth as objects in themselfs; an open bank credit could suit him just as well; he leaves that squalid passion to vulgar mortals.

Contrary to what a lot of thoughtless people seem to believe, the Court Painter takes not even an excessive delight in clothes and material elegance. For he,the perfect art celebrity, these things are no more than the symbol of the aristocratic superiority of his artistic mind. Thus, in his eyes, enamoured as he is above all of distinction, perfection in dress and painting execution consists in absolute simplicity, which is, indeed, the best way of being distinguished. What then can this passion be, which has crystallized into a doctrine, and has formed a number of outstanding devotees, this unwritten code that has moulded so proud a celebrityhood? It is, above all, the burning desire to create a personal form of originality, within the external limits of social conventions and commission fees. It is a kind of cult of the ego which can still survive the pursuit of that form of happiness to be found only in his own artistic enterprise for example; which can even survive what are called illusions. It is the pleasure of causing surprise in others when they get the bill, and the proud satisfaction of never showing oneself beyond the truth on the canvas. Court Painter may be blasé, he may even suffer pain, but in the latter case he will keep smiling, like the Spartan under the bite of the fox.

The specific beauty of the Court Painter consists particularly in that cold exterior resulting from the unshakable determination to remain unmoved by the avant guarde; one is reminded of a latent fire, whose existence is merely suspected, and which, if it wanted to, but it does not, could burst forth in all its brightness. All this is expressed to perfection in the Court Painter ,the Great Dominion’s prolific portraitist of pompous political personages that populate the playgrounds of paucity and …. stuff like that!
Editors Note:Reprints are not available so commit to memory.