Taking comics seriously by Philip Willey.

Walking along Government Street thinking about all the usual things….Tracey Emin, Rupert Murdoch, the Chapman brothers, mythology, cosmogony, sex, food, death, wondering why Kate and William skipped B.C.…making little mental notes….the kind of stuff that can maybe be worked up into an article….or perhaps a chapter in another unpublished novel. It’s a nice evening…I’m on my way to Olio Cooperative to meet Sean Brookes and maybe talk about his paintings.

Sean’s work really isn’t my cup of tea. It’s what I call the dungeons and dragons school. There’s a giant bird representing nature choking to death, skulls, teeth, knives, blood…it’s all too dark and comic booky for me. It’s art of course but the sort of art that look great on heavy metal T-shirts or Harley gas tanks. To his credit Sean has experimented with different directions in the paintings…they range from abstract to illustrative and there is one piece I quite liked…‘Coral’ with purple polyp-like shapes broken up by white areas.

This isn’t a put-down of Sean’s work so please don’t throw things. He’s a nice guy. And serious about painting. He’s new to painting too. It’s just that I don’t relate to the genre. It’s good fantasy art. Technically excellent and very imaginative …if you like that kind of thing. The pieces I like best are the ones where he transcends the sword and sorcery stuff.

I know some people can get quite passionate about comics but to me even the great Frank Frazetta seemed to lack the illusive ingredient that separates art from illustration.

All of which raises the question ‘What is art?’ Googling it doesn’t help. You’ll have to ask Jerry Saltz or Charles Saatchi Gagosian or somebody. I think I know it when I see it but I don’t have the ultimate definition. In these days of Rage Comics, Pokemon and Pop Surrealism the lines have become blurred.

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Mike Lewis for instance. He uses comic book characters but at one remove. They become symbols in his work. Symbols of self-analysis, facets of the collective American consciousness. They are cartoons yes, but underneath the humour is a serious exploration of what it means to grow up in America. So who’s to say where it fits into art history? Not me.

There is definitely something about the comic book approach to art that appeals to me. It can be a powerful political tool in the right hands and I like the looseness of people like Terry Gilliam, Ralph Steadman and Sam Kieth. Their ideas seem to flow straight from the mind to the page without a lot of intellectual interference.

Which brings us to Lyle Schultz, one of my Facebook friends. Lyle was born in Saskatchewan where he was deemed Odd by doctors. There were oddity problems at school. He worked at odd jobs before deciding to study art. He came to Vancouver Island to work in the woods. Got a show at the Emily Carr Gallery in Victoria and has since had numerous exhibitions. He has a growing collection of loyal fans.

At first sight a lot of his drawings look like doodles. Schultz is prolific. He doesn’t so much doodle as gush. His work is fun. It’s dark a lot of it but redeemed by a gonzo humour. His undisciplined energy means galleries don’t know what to do with him. It’s frustrating he says….he admits to being multi-talented, highly intelligent, charming and hugely good looking but he’s obliged to resort to being a stand-up comedian to get any attention.

Schultz’s work is beyond cartooning. There’s an aesthetic sensibility in his paintings. There are nods to Bacon, Matisse, Picasso….he knows his history. Schultz has a strong sense of balance and design and he has an instinctive sense of how best to fill a page. There’s a compulsion to record each and every one of life’s absurdities. A lonely tormented little figure drawing feverishly under a bare light bulb, TVs, boom-boxes, bleak kitchens and bathrooms, fish that range from goofy to voracious, they all get drawn, coloured and turned into art. 

Needless to say the playful stuff sells best. It’s obsessive and he can’t stop doing it. But where, he wonders, is the pay off?

Soon I hope. Maybe this will help.