doodledream: Baie-Comeau Butt & the Crazy Horse

That's where I grew up, Baie-Comeau (Comeau bay). Up, waaaaay up..! In the cold ass north. Been away for 10 years now but I go back often and it's proven to be a nice comfy spot for me as an artist. Matter of fact, Baie-Comeau is host to the oldest and most prestigious Painter's Symposium in the Province, and as of summer 09, I am it's youngest invited painter.

The Symposium: 30 painters in a hockey arena in the summer painting live for the public for 6 days from 7am to 10 pm, all expenses paid for the invited painters! And I'm not talking about any foods, I'm saying we ate lobster and crab in the same dish with a mountain of shrimp in between! And all this surrounded by older cooler artists. What a trip.

"The prize"
24x30 oil on canvas
2009
SOLD

Artists each get booths to work out of. You set up in there and try to produce and sell some art. On my second or third day, I was painting my new make belief cowboy when this girl came at me, I saw her running across from the other side of the arena! She had seen the painting with the girl on the bed and wanted me to make something like it but using a picture of her butt as reference. So I did. And she bought her butt for a hefty sum!

Visit theGraveyart.blogspot.com to see the painting, top left...

"Old Rusty and Grey"
30x40" oil on canvas
2009-10
SOLD

I had a profound smoke break one morning during the symposium. I went and had some of that funky stuff out back and when I came back there was one of the painters painting a still life outside. That, off the bat, is pretty odd on it's own, but the real weird thing is that this dude was painting with his back to the still life arrangement! As I got closer I started to hear the Pink Floyd emanating from his headphones. He took them off and said a series of magical things to me. Things that inspired me to paint from my head. Because apparently, that's the only real art. So that's what I did. I splashed a whole bunch of paint and made it look like a lot of things that day... but at one point it made sense as a cowboy and people started getting interested. So I perfected my cowboy and sold it to them. All straight out of my head. Now that's fun stuff.

I had done some painting from imagination before, not many pieces made it out alive yet... Check out theGraveyart.blogspot.com for more craaazy stuff from my craaazy mind.

This little guy did get to the finish line, i think, and ironically, it's a horsey, a really pissed off little horsey.