Acrylic on gessoed mounted aluminium panel, 14 x 11''
painting #257, 2017
This painting was inspired after viewing the exhibition, Hergé à Québec held at le Musée de la Civilisation in Québec City in late September. Last year we had planned to visit le Musée Hergé in Louvain-la-Neuve, 32 km outside of Brussels but our bus tour was cancelled at the last minute when my wife and I were they only ones who had booked on that day. Everything happens for a reason, so if we can't go to the museum.....let the museum come to us.
This travelling exhibition was organized by le Musée Hergé. After stops in Paris, London and Geneva, the city of Québec was honoured and excited to host the show for a five month stint. Hergé à Québec was seen by 420,593 visitors, breaking the record for the most ticket sold in the museum's 30 year history.
The exhibition explores the world of Georges Rémi, the talented Belgian born artist known as Hergé who created Tintin and other comic strips. Among the show's treasures was of a selection of valuable documents and artefacts of his life, original drawings, storyboards, 3D-models, illustration art from his early artistic career, a selection of his own private art collection and a mural of books of The Adventures of Tintin translated in 70 languages.
Hergé meets Andy Warhol in NYC, 1972
Mural of The Adventures of Tintin books
Model of the Rocket featured in two books
In this composition the museum plan and exhibition leaflets were the jump off points that ignited the narrative. A wonderful picture of Hergé by Belgian photographer Robert Kayaert (1920-2007) graced the covers of both. The small figurines of Tintin and Milou (Snowy) were eBay purchases I had acquired a few years ago who were waiting in the wings, while a set of pencils were purchased at the Museum Gift Shop upon exiting the exhibition, unsuspecting that they would soon appear in a painting. The background imagery is from the book, Musée Hergé with preparatory drawings and final illustration for Tintin in Tibet. The book was a Christmas gift from my wife two years ago purchased that same fall at le Salon du Livre in Shippagan, NB (Book Fair).
Selfie at le Musée de la Civilisation, Québec
The painting will be on display at Galerie de Bellefeuille in Montreal in early December, 2017.
-SOLD
