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Court Painterism in Practice

What does the Court Painter do when he wakes up early in the afternoon? Does he moon over beauty and contemplate the eternal verities? Does he jot down a few bons mots with accompanying illustrations? Does he man the barricades to protest our vulgar, one percenter, consumerist and digital society? Does he pine for the days when artistic men wore knee breeches, silk stockings and tailored smocks?

No, the true Court Painter does none of these things.

The Court Painter goes to his bath and scrubs himself clean, shaves, brushes his teeth, and arranges any stray hairs. Then he adorns himself, examining each detail in his mirror – the dimple in his tie, the shine on his shoes, the puff of his pocket square, the precision of his trouser crease, the tip of his tam,the bloom of his boutonniere, the harmony and balance of all the components of his ensemble – until he gets it just right. When he finally departs his home, he is a habitué not of the salon, opera, theatre, museum, concert hall, casino, restaurant or club to which he may or may not arrive, but to his tailor and haberdasher in advance of his studio.

For Court Painter is a man with visible good taste. Dressing well is his hallmark. Strip the dandy Court Painter of his clothes and what do you have?

Court Painter’s recent history can be summarized in just two albeit Proustian sentences: The definitive study of the portraitist as a social and artistic phenomenon, A Hardon MacKay’s very short essay “The Court Painter: A HUGE Story,” shows how this original, robust, snuff-snorting Inglewood dandy of a painter eschewed the jewel buttons, lace ruffles, silk stockings, gold shoe buckles, perfume and other extravagances of the aristocratic art fop, and also the coarse slovenliness, dirt and disarray affected by Wild rose sympathizers, and instead emphasized superb fit, perfection of cut, harmony of colour, personal cleanliness and, most famously, the well-tied starched linen cravat, and came to dominate his society through his insolence, then crossed the Bow River into Calgary and returned to his Inglewood studio accessorized and sissified in his attire, and became, while remaining a social lion, the more flamboyant “courtly dandy” who eventually drinks too much absinthe, smokes too much hash and Export A’s, rages against the bourgeois art college professors, dressed in black, and thus became the decadent dandy, who spiced his personality with wit and aestheticism, consciously adopted aesthetic garb to match his studio enterprises, entertained the seniors at Tims and just missed becoming the fin-de-siecle Court Painter, who floundered in the shallows of his own shallowness and became a surviving dandy painter and true heir and most insightful interpreter of buddy what’s his name. He became the Bright Young Thing of the early 21st century and one of the charming personages depicted in “Art Oddities of Alberta Revisited,” and fashioned and continues to embody the guiding principle of artist’s studio attire, nonchalant elegance, that has endured for the past three years nine months in Calgary and environs.

But throughout the Court Painter’s many mutations, one constant has persisted: a preeminent political portraitist of the Great Dominion distinguishes himself by the way he dresses inside and outside the studio. Everything else about the Court Painter has been more or less mutable especially his lack of judgement in accepting commissions from those politicians of questionable shelf life.

Court Painter needs no explanation, no justification, no interpretation. Instead of analyzing the dandy, we must return to the dandy’s Iowa roots and directly experience with our senses the luminosity of mid western American dandyism itself.

If you must coat Court Painter with some intellectual and artistic veneer, then think of him as an existential hero. In response to the abstract, anonymous, and impersonal international art fairs , he asserts his singular self  by never being invited. And, as is his grand tradition, he chooses to assert his superiority in the most frivolous manner possible.

We may prefer to think of Court Painter as a lily of the field. The Bible reads, “Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin. And yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.”

So, dear reader, purge yourselves of philosophical pretensions, emulate the lilies of the field, and ponder life’s most important question:

What will you wear in the studio of life?

 

Shirtless Court Painter leaves international media breathless

Media from Time to BBC exult after the Great Dominion’s Court Painter was photographed shirtless after emerging from a cave next to his Calgary studio.

Come to Canada!

See the beaver, the bears … and the bare-chested Court Painter!

Or as News.Mic put it, “Behold, the Shirtless Court Painter — one of the Great Dominion’s most prized national treasures.”

Time magazine and the BBC have now devoted space to how Court Painter was photographed shirtless after emerging from a cave next to his studio in the Inglewood district of Calgary..

The respected media outlets document the reactions of Chris Cran celebrity artist and main competetor to Court Painter, who recently stumbled upon the scene while strolling in the alley and smelling the wild roses that line it’s perimeter.

Mr. Cran encountered Court Painter with his pet rat in a cloud of smoke . The rat was apparently shirted.

The BBC notes how the chance encounter at the cave drove Chris Cran to reflect on life.

“When you step out of your studio, you never know what adventures await,” Cran wrote on the door of Court Painter’s studio.

Time also records The Star’s story, noting that Cran had to make a quick decision when he saw Court Painter climbing out of the hole.

“It was like a 20-foot-wide round hole and Court Painter emerged with his pet rat in tow and said, ‘This is the moment of truth; do I stop here or do I carry on?’” Cran told The Star.

(image sourced from recent rave at CC’s studio)

“This anecdote contains hope for us all,” exults digital magazine Slate. “The next time you see a cave, you should probably check to see if there is a hunky international political portraitist inside.”

This isn’t the first time Court Painter has been spotted topless.

Court Painter, of course, takes shirtlessness to a much higher level, appearing waist-up-naked a dozen times in a 2016 calendar of himself.

In the calendar, he flashes his pecs while painting, flexing, horseback riding, smoking and clutching his pet rat.(reproductions unavailable because of copyright)

His most recent was being shirtless 0n a steed at the 2016 Calgary Stampede parade.

UPDATED FROM POST OF AUGUST 2016

Jason Kenney tries to channel the power of the pickup truck

Excerpted from National Observer :By Max Fawcett | Opinion | July 27th 2021

Jason Kenney may have appointed a new minister of culture earlier this month, but culture wars are clearly still the purview of the premier. His latest skirmish involves a broadside against the “Toronto” Globe and Mail for a column it published criticizing Canada’s love affair with the pickup truck. “I’m happy to say that ~40% of the vehicles on Alberta roads are pickups,” he tweeted, in what has to be one of the strangest examples of Albertan virtue-signaling to date. “Maybe Toronto columnists should try getting around this province during a prairie blizzard in a Smart Car.”

It wasn’t just the Globe and Mail making the case against pickup trucks, mind you. About a week before it hit publish on the column, a piece by Toronto writer Davide Mastracci made the case for banning pickup trucks outright — one that got the attention of the culture warriors over at Fox News. Both pieces make the same general argument, which is that pickup trucks — which remain the top selling class of vehicles in Canada — are bad for the environment, dangerous to other human beings, and inappropriate to life in an urban environment. 

IMAGES from August 1,2016 post.; 5 fricken years ago and Jason Kenney still has not run out of dog whistles!

Conrad Black endorses Court Painter
‘Honored to be your friend,’ writes The Lord Black of Crossharbour



Calgary AB — The Court Painter hasn’t received too many ringing endorsements from famous conservative elites — but he’s just received praise from one Canadians know well.
Conrad Black has penned a piece titled, “The Court Painter Is The Good Guy,” for the conservative National Review. It apparently delighted his old pal, who’s currently leading national polls for the best darned  portrait painter of the political elite in the Great Dominion.
“What an honour to read your piece,” the Court Painter  faxed to the Canadian-born former media baron and felon. “As one of the truly great intellects & my friend, I won’t forget!”



The Lord Black of Crossharbour, his official title as a British peer, retorted: “Many thanks, and all good wishes in helping to clean up the Alberta art scene. Honored to be your friend.”

The Calgary art establishment is reportedly mortified by the prospect the Court Painter might win the court of public opinion prize for the best darned portrait painter of the political elite in the Great Dominion.
Polls suggest the art celebrity is less popular with wealthy people, and far less popular with those holding an art college degree than with the working class.
But his affluent admirer deployed his considerable linguistic arsenal in defence of the Court Painter, in a piece that featured Latin and French words and such verbal amuse-bouches as “clangorous,” “apercus,” “reminiscences,” and “mendacious.”

The basic premise of Black’s piece was that the Court Painter is being unfairly smeared by the art establishment and lame stream art media, whom Black accuses of dishonestly with distorted reviews of his dear friend’s pictorial prowess and paint application.



He describes the Court Painter as a threat to the corrupt art system where members of art associations represent corporate hobbyists and media that unfairly tar creatives like the Court Painter.
Black went on to list a number of the Court Painters paintings he described as reasonable. The list includes numerous flattering renderings of his close friends that by definition include the pompous personas that inhabit the vast political wilderness across the Great Dominion.
But the list is selective and Lord Black of Crossharbour simply describes his choices in terms of clangorous up the apercus and reminiscent of the mendacious.
However on the whole, he gives high marks to his slum-dwelling friend.
“(He) is striking very close to the heart of the Great Dominion’s persisting pernicious political portraiture problem: the corrupt, dysfunctional artistic system and the dishonest lame stream art media,” Black wrote in longhand with a quill pen.



“To adapt Banff naturalist A Hardon Mackay’s old phrase, he has shaken the Great Dominion’s pernicious political portrait system ‘by the eyeteeth,’ and it will be better for it.”

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’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.

(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 Painter fashion book and animated movie, The Court Painter Wears Prada Short Pants .


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.


Earlier this month, Canadian Art featured the Court Painter as a Corn Husk doll.


Court Painter Reaches Peak Court Painter in His Video About Feminism

The Great Dominion’s Court Painter is a total dreamboat as far as Canadian portrait painters go. He’s almost too perfect: Much has been made of his luscious shiny dome, comfort with baby alley cats and pandas alike, and hope-y change-y art politics. He personally distributes winter jackets to other artists! He inspires fantasies with Aynd Rand!


And of course, because he is the Court Painter “I’ve recruited 2 unpaid female Studio Assistants because it’s 2015” , he blathers on about feminism whenever he gets a chance.


In a new video from Nelson Auteur www.nelsonauteur.com , Court Painter chats with somebody off camera about gender equity, clay and plaster modeling ,and being a working artist among the unwashed in Inglewood.It’s a picture of Court Painter at peak Court Painter. “I talk about the fact that I’m a feminist as often as I can, and every time I do, it gets a huge groan in my studio and the media reacts, and the Twitterverse explodes,” he says. “I will keep saying that until there are no more groans … ‘cause that’s where I want to get to. It’s just—if you’re a progressive portraitist as I am, you really should be liked by the gals ‘cause it’s about equality, it’s about respect, it’s about making sure the unpaid studio interns keep comin’.”

You can almost smell the earnest goodwill dripping from his pores like maple syrup.
Court Painter makes himself out to be the progressive portraitist of the 21st century. He frets over the fact that his studio job means that he has less time to spend at the Ship & Anchor watching girl sports and placing bets with his buddies.He freaks out when he sees his Press Attache judging women in a fashion magazine and proceeds to recount stories when he to found unacceptable blemishes that offended his male gaze.

Let’s all commend the Great Dominion for having a self-aware feminist alley cat-cuddling Court Painter while we consider our future of art gazing while avoiding purchases.
Reprints of this article are unavailable.

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.”