OTTAWA — The Trudeau government only found out by accident that former prime minister Stephen Harper was performing Sweet Caroline and  The Star Spangled Banner in a command musical performance at the White House next week in the midst of a looming trade war between Canada and the United States.

According to one senior official; Harper out of modesty didn’t mention the visit, bucking convention by not informing the Canadian government.

In addition to his usual rock & roll gigs ,Harper serenades often with international conservative leaders as chair of the International Democrat Union, an alliance of conservative and centre-right parties founded 35 years ago by Britain’s Margaret Thatcher, Germany’s Helmut Kohl and then-U.S. president George Bush Sr., among others.

Court Painter, in a spirit of public service, has taken up the tools of his trade to render an ancient folk tale originating In a Land Not To Too Far Away. These graphic attempts he admits are less than adequate to the traditional telling however proposes the folktale renderings as a faint but familiar fairy tale, a tautological tall tale, a twisted trickster tale, a myopic myth, a languid  legend or possibly an outright fabulist fib as if written in the blood of banshees!

You be the judge!

Through the skillful deal making skills of intermediary and Press Attache AHM, Court Painter was awarded by an anonymous patron, a private commission based on the theme of “Making Up”.

The following are images from this series which is already creating an Awards buzz.

Donald Snitch Trump, President of the United States of America speaking on June 19.2018:

“There was a story two days ago in a major newspaper talking about people living in Canada coming into the United States and smuggling things back into Canada because the tariffs are so massive. The tariffs to get common items back into Canada are so high that they have to smuggle ’em in. They buy shoes and they wear them,” he said. They scuff ’em up, they make ’em sound old or look old. No, we’re treated horribly.”

Donald the Snitch just blew the whistle on smuggler Court Painter’s side business;  the purchasing of a variety of brand spanking new shoes in Sweetgrass Montana,which before loading in his conveyances he “pre scuffed’ real good to assure an undetected smooth passage through the Coutts Alberta customs .

Thanks to Donald The Snitch, Court Painter is now out of the shoe business and back in the studio!

So much for The Donald’s pro business rhetoric!

Press Attache has to reassemble original sketches ripped up by Court Painter

‘It became a challenge, like when you’re doing a square root problem like if 35 + 125 = 17.88, then what will be the value of 80 + 65 ?’

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A Hardon MacKay  is the Court Painter’s Press Attache and  studio archivist , responsible for archiving all documents and sketches that are produced in support of the highly successful Court Painter enterprise. Unbeknownst to the public and patrons, all  masterworks of the Court Painter are initially mapped out and conceptualized in fine hand made detail  by Press Attache AHM.These preparatory works are assembled in a number of sketchbooks bound in fine pigskin from the finest of pigs.

Alas,in the last year, he spent hours taping up  sketches from these books that had been torn to pieces by the angry genius,Court Painter.

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“They come in tatters,” he said, “from the back office of the Court Painter studio.”

“I try to do the best I can,” he said. “I was told not to tell the media that I was doing this.Especially Ezra Levant and The Rebel”

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AHM was also a records management analyst from a bygone era and some say it was the only reason he was hired by Court Painter since His Court Eminence considers himself the dominant male in the studio pack and a communications and marketing expert; in addition to considering himself a bit of a raconteur and fashion prince.

So everything Court Painter touches, from discarded palettes , paint rags,paint tubes …all the AHM preliminary concepts and sketches of his masterworks— and even hand painted sticky notes and discarded cigarette butts — has to be inventoried under the Court Painter Studio Records Act as historical records.

The troubles began when Court Painter realized AHM truly was the brains behind the studio business and was coming up with all the painting ideas wonderfully documented and preserved in the sketch books bound in the finest pig skin from the finest of pigs and they had more street value than his finished commissions. Well kaboom! he went into a fit of rage turning this archival treasure house into scraps of paper that needed to be laboriously reassembled.

Tearing up sketches has been Court Painter’s cruel method every morning upon coming into studio, which is a clear contrast to the previous bucolic years before he realized the monetary and reputational value of his Press Attache’s highly significant preparatory documents and sketches.

At first, AHM assumed that the ripping of sketches was due to occasional fits of Court Painter distemper— brought on by lack of media coverage and poor sales ; however, it soon became clear that he was purposely and maniacally destroying sketches  behind the studio office curtain as a daily gesture of resentment and pique towards AHM.

“So, I went and bought jumbo rolls of clear scotch tape,” AHM explained in his languid speech rhythm,an artifact of  years spent spinning yarns about art world successes.

AHM said he believes that Court Painter understands that the ripped sketches will need to be archived.

However,every morning the documents and sketches continue to be torn into pieces.

“I don’t think Court Painter cares about my legacy,” AHM murmured sotto voce.

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“The portraiture of Court Painter is often dismissed as an art form mired in the past: deadly dull, deadly old-fashioned, just plan dead, its corpse still reeking mustily of the council chamber, the company boardroom and the smoke of cigars long since extinguished,” art critic Andrew Graham-Dixon supposedly  atmospherically extolled. The Court Painter’s studio itself, as he supposedly pointed out, is rooted in these musty Victorian memories. In 1856 when Prime Minister Lord Palmerston was explaining to the public why future Court Painter studios should exist, he stated: “there cannot be a greater incentive to mental exertion, to noble actions, to good conduct on the part of the living than for them to see before them the features of those who have done things which are worthy of our admiration.”

So there!