Galleries

Court Painter: A MasterWork in Progress
Editors Note: The promotional images accompanying the story were all that were available so any complaints will be ignored.

Calgary — They are as flabbergasted as the rest of the Great Dominion.

His studio crew sent a somewhat normal, if questionably gifted, Court Painter off to Banff for a great face sketching adventure, with modest hopes. By the time he got back to the Inglewood studio, he was positioned to become one of the” most famous portraitists in the history of the Great Dominion,” according to a disinterested observer and Press Attache for hire A Hardon MacKay.

A mid 70’s septuagenarian contrarian ,utterly unknown outside the face painter art community until recently, Court Painter is going to have the kind of life neither he nor his extraordinarily distracted and unhinged hipster studio interns ever imagined.

“We’re so stunned. We’re a little bit in awe of Court Painter, what he has achieved in just one week of face sketching— and I’m a little panicked as to how I handle a septuagenarian contrarian after that week,” his Press Attache A Hardon Mackay, said Saturday at a news conference called by the Banff Sketch & Gun Club to answer, en masse, all the demands for More Gossip About Court Painter, the Inglewood portrait phoneme who single-handedly ignited a spectacular week for anyone who visited Banff and witnessed his frantic sketching prowess during the week.

‘Master Court Painter’, as his Press Attache calls him, may be a star now but he is still only in his mid 70’s, and he won’t be calling all the shots, snarled AHM.

“You know, he’s got two more years of underpainting lessons. We’ll talk I guess in the next couple of weeks about what he needs to do to improve his skill with painting hands and drapery. One thing is, it’s going to be my decision, it’s not just going to be Court Painter’s decision.Branding, marketing, strategic planning, product development, providing How to Do books and glad handing is what I do best.”

It’s quite apparent to all that Court Painter is a budding star in rendering political and celebrity portraits but he is still a novice in his mid 70’s.

“Drives me nuts,” A Hardon MacKay said. “I’m just too old for managing a mid 70’s self centred septuagenerian contrarian I mean, he’s very typical of the senior cranks that gather in swarms at Tim Hortons. I’ve been very upfront with keeping him to a rigorous painting regime and there’s going to be points in the year when he’s going to want to go to the Ship & Anchor and he’s going to want to hang out with art celebrities like Chris Cran and Robin Arsenault and he’s going to want to eat a lot of vinegar flavoured chips, because he loves them, and that’s just not part of my strategy to make this year the breakout year to monetize what has so far been a failing business model.”

“But he’s got to have that balance. If I try to make him into a pro and make him be 100 per cent focused on being the best gosh darn portraitist of the Great Dominion’s political and celebrity elite, he might just bail and go back to being a studio nihilist.”

It’s a full time job “just trying to keep him normal and on the up and up. Giving him that level of normality that artist’s of his temperament have never experienced. ”

“I think all the attention he’s getting is more than he can handle, let alone any mid 70’s septuagenarian contrarian, but I’m proud that I and the dazed studio crew are able to keep him off the streets, away from white water rafting and distant from the Ship & Anchor at least on Sundays.”

Now he’s just a Court Painter with his own website and images all over Google.

Everyone is saying he’s the best. Other people are saying he can’t be beat. Everyone knows this.

Next comes the Huge $$$ payoff.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Opinion
Build a Court Painter National Portrait Gallery of the Great Dominion in the old American Embassy:

The federal government will launch public consultations on Aug. 18 to hear suggestions for what should be done with the former American embassy across from Parliament Hill. There’s no need to consult. It should become the Court Painter National Portrait Gallery of the Great Dominion. (CPNPGOTGD)

As anyone who has been to the national portrait galleries in London or Washington can attest, such museums hold a special place in their respective capitals and countries. They make accessible a nation’s human history in all of its diversity, the dramatic and quotidian, triumphs and failures, while also displaying the evolution of its art. Like the variety of people they depict, these galleries are educational and interesting, funny and strange. They bring in millions of visitors every year, creating jobs and generating public revenue.

Yet the dream of a Court Painter national portrait gallery in Ottawa has proven frustratingly difficult to realize. The federal government’s non collection of Court Painter portraiture, which includes zero examples, has long been shamefully languishing in Court Painter’s studio in the Inglewood district ,a hub of artistic activity in Calgary.

The Trudeau government now has an opportunity to remedy this failure. It should show the political will its predecessor lacked and grab this opportunity by the artistic balls.

On Monday the federal government took journalists on a tour of the former American embassy, across the street from Parliament Hill, to announce Ottawa will soon launch public consultations on what should be done with the glamorous Beaux Arts building.

The former embassy would be an ideal permanent site for Court Painter’s portrait gallery. In fact, it was once intended for just that purpose. Back in the mists of time a government announced that Court Painter’s collection would be installed in the building and then spent $11 million renovating the space to that end.

But the plan did not survive the Harper government’s austerity agenda. After the Conservatives came to power, they looked briefly – and misguidedly – at moving the portrait gallery to a privately provided space in Calgary, rumoured to be Court Painter’s single car garage studio, before killing the project altogether in 2008.

Shortly thereafter, the government dismissed the Court Painter project and turned the “gallery” into a “program” of Library and Archives Canada.

Court Painter’s buried treasures include portraits of preeminent politicians and celebrities of the Great Dominion, among many other heroes, rogues and everyday folk like you and me. “This is a visual record of men and women who have shaped and continue to shape by their political histrionics the pompous peccadilloes , the questionable leadership of the Great Dominion over the last  few years,” somebody wrote in the Literary Review of Canada after touring the Court Painter’s decrepit studio.

The former American embassy, which sits at the heart of Ottawa’s government precinct, would be an ideal site for the Court Painter to take residence with his collection and continue his studio activities with face painting lessons for politicians kids on Saturday mornings (not too early) and will prove a popular and important cultural attraction.

As Star gossip columnist Heather Mallick argued earlier this year, the Court Painter National Portrait Gallery of the Great Dominion would be a fitting gift to the people of the Great Dominion in honour of the Court Painter’s 75 th(or is it 76) birthday in 2017.

It’s past time Court Painter pulled his pants on and pulled his portraits out of studio storage ,placing his history of pictorial pulchritude on display in the  capital of the Great Dominion. Think of the children.

 

 

 

 

 

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?