Stirred on by our planned move to France at the end of 2013 I have begun to put my older art work on line, both to create an archive of my large and diverse achievements as an artist and to make a selection of my work available for purchase by interested collectors.
The works to be posted will be a carefully chosen selection of the best work available in various media, including oil paintings, watercolours, drawings, and collages, done throughout my career as an exhibiting artist. As well as some old favourites, these archives will contain some surprises of interest to all art lovers. As the various sites become ready I’ll be posting notices letting you know how to get there and providing a little description of what to expect. At this time I have three new related sites ready that I would like to tell you about.
In 1990 I started work on an epic comic book collage / graphic novel that came to be known as: Mr. Manitoba – Secrets in Art
“Mr. Manitoba – Secrets in Art”
Using dialogue and frames cut from old comic books and combined with images from magazines I created a story of an art thief and artist who, having made a Faustian pact with an art dealer, becomes a renowned and successful artist, only to lose his abilities and sink into despair. Struggling to renew himself, Mr. Manitoba makes a comeback, only to be put on trial for his crimes against art. The entire story is a prescient look at originality, copyright, and the money and celebrity driven art world of today.
The entire manuscript, along with an introduction, has now been placed online and may be viewed at:
Once the story of Mr. Manitoba was completed I set out to do a number of paintings based on various pages from the book.
“Just watch this”
These highly detailed oil paintings on canvas, 32”x48”, were meant to immortalize and make presentable for sale images originally created in a medium that may prove fragile and ephemeral. These durable paintings were done over a period of years in the early 1990’s and a large selection of them were shown in the 1993 Artropolis exhibition. The paintings look very impressive in their large scale format and have a compelling contemporary aura. Some of the paintings have since been sold, but the greater portion of the collection has now been put on line and for sale at:
Related to and growing out of the story of Mr. Manitoba is the work I have been doing ever since in comic book collage. Since 1995 I have collaborated with fellow artists David Wilson, Bill Mullan and Neil Parker, along with other artists who have joined us from time to time in a movement known as Eccolage. Continuing in the basic comic book format we have occasionally branched out into more ambitious projects including the production of a ‘zine which ran for 30 issues, first appearing in 1999, with the last issue released in 2005. Meeting regularly over the past 17 years many hundreds of these collages have been produced. Shown publicly in small exhibits from time to time the best of these collages are now being posted on line at:
The images on this site are being added to constantly, both from the vast archive and from the most recent creation. Bookmark this site, and all the others, as one of your favourites! Just to give you a taste of what to expect, here is a small selection of images:
“Are you a god?”
“More bad news”
“Cool”
Once other new archival sites are established and ready for viewing I’ll post a description and link here and send out a notification. There will be lots of great things coming up. Do tell your friends about these sites, and keep in mind that all this work would make a great addition to your personal art collections.
If you haven’t already started your own art collection, now is the time! Keep in mind that all the pages posted on ‘Eccolage’ are available for CDN$99, the same price as the ‘Drawing of the day’, which you can see right here on this website. If you are not already a subscriber to ‘Drawing of the day’, go to that page and subscribe to receive a notification of every new drawing, Monday through Friday. It’s free! If you have any questions or comments, or if you would like more information on this or any of the sites I’ve mentioned here, be sure to contact me and I’ll be very happy to help you out.
Frank Eric Zeidler
