So I have taken on a couple of volunteering commitments to pass the time between jobs, to broaden my social horizons a little more in line with my values.
One of them, a thrift shop in town. The biggest, I limit it to a couple of days a week, 4 hours a day, I'm glad to be of service but you can see pretty quick how this could turn into exploitation. They'll take every piece of good intentioned free labor they can get.
The first couple of days, dusting, sweeping, sorting out of donations...
But, by and by they find a department they think interests me - which it does, and it's the vast repository of unsold pictures and frames.
They've not sold them, just laid them up in the back, a hoarders paradise, clutter everywhere, hundreds of unopened boxes, each potentially containing treasures, most containing nothing but kitchen appliances, used, brand new still-in-the-box, cutlery, plates, cups, saucers...
Some are valuable, most aren't, in any event, the sheer volume inoculates you against ever buying any of this shit new ever again.
And the pictures, laid up, they never found time to get around to them, as in a bunker of them laid up in storage. So my days now are spent finding space on the walls to hang pictures, price picture frames, assess and price pictures.
Now - this, while a job in every sense of the word less payment - it amuses me. Most of the pictures, bad-art extraordinaire. Hotel art. Pastel prints of flowers in vases. Or of old cartoons - think back to the 70's caricatures that were briefly so popular - "The Golfers", some painful, comical hijinks involving golfers. Or hunters or fishermen or rugby players or tennis players or cricket players or...
You get the idea.
OMG. Anne Geddes. God, if I had one bullet and it were her or President Putin I would probably put it in my own head. No, hers. He threatens life on earth, she the very heart and soul....
Prints of Holland, Amsterdam, London, the Vacation trophies or souvenirs. Bad third world paintings of tropical sunsets, someone playing the mandolin, guitar, who knows.
Commonplace landscapes, decorative arts, a lot of the acrylic pours - I've tried this, and - if I don't say so myself - to much better effect.
Portraits.
Oh, yes. The portraits.
Now we're getting to it, the meat of it, no longer prints, but the untutored geniuses of Nelson and Environs.
And there are some truly - great? horrible? wtf? I don't know.
Someone has painted his probably beautiful East-Indian or Polynesian bride in painstaking, loving detail. You can see the effort. And it's painful. The effect - not good, merely - well, painful, you can see how hard (he?) tried. And then again - exactly the same painting, only twice the size, but the same level of incompetence.
It's brutal. I look at it and immediately see a divorce. I don't blame her. And - to make matters worse - I see my own hand, the painstaking attention to minute detail that amounts to nothing of value - the trying too hard, the inability to speak what's so clearly in your heart. A bungling oaf, an inept clown. It's personal now, it hurts.
Another, sepia toned "Hobo embracing boy" by so-and-so in memory of so-and-so out of Castlegar, and - the style, like a Penguin cover of a George Orwell novel, but - not.
Nope. Nope nope nope.
A 5 panel "original" of a tree who's branches turn into 2 faces that each look at one another. Badly done, probably painted in China in 10 minutes (tops!), sold on Amazon - and - even as I laughed at it sold yet again.
This is it, my tastes, bloody hell, I have to be careful, most of what I love will never sell, and a lot of what I think of as trash flies off the shelf.
This continues, no end to bad art, the lack of signature doesn't tell me if it was painted in Nelson or the Dominican Republic, and then - once in a while you find it:
The treasure.
Here - a painting of 2 black women, with thatched huts behind them pulling water from a well. Less a painting then daubs by a well-meaning missionary that wanted to document his/her good deeds in the dark continent. It hasn't aged well.
Here - a painting of a dark Mexican in formal dress lurking in an emerald green forest. The emerald green, unadulterated, straight from the tube, it looks like a bad painting of the final glimpse of a serial killer spotted waiting to pounce...
Here - surprisingly - on a 16" X 20" panel, a collection of tree boles in a forest. The stumps extend up and above the frame, the greens and browns, I'd date it - maybe the 40's? It smacks of the Group of 7. Same color palette, perfect color harmony, hard to explain - but I like it. This I'd hang at home.
Here, a 60's or 70's portrait of flowers, oil on canvas, beautiful colors again, well realized, abstracted slightly, it needs an ornate gilt frame. I set it aside.
And - finally - perfect wood frame, an Indian sitting at a campfire. Dark, muted colors, perfect. Another masterpiece, I'd buy.
***
I've tried to talk them into having a bad-art-gala, a fundraiser, silent auction, with a guided tour by none other than myself, lecturing on the deep mystery of art, talent, in the vein of "What in the world were they fucking thinking??!!", but - I've not been there long enough, and the guy I work with, I think we disagree on a few points, a little more conservative - and - well, it's not gonna happen. Which is a shame, because, surely, I can't be the only one looking at this and wondering...