Another of America's greatest painters ever was Andrew Wyeth. There is a brilliant documentary about his life on PBS. It’s part of their American Masters series, titled, Wyeth. You can watch it on Amazon Prime too. After seeing this, I wouldn’t blame any artist putting down their brushes for a long hiatus. You’ll be left dumbstruck that one person could be so astoundingly prodigious for so many decades. Watching it made me feel wonderfully insignificant. So, I did this little Mad Magazine cartoon of him as a thank you.
John Singer Sargent
One of the greatest painters of all time is John Singer Sargent. Whenever I’m in a museum anywhere in the world, I always looks for the Sargents. Without fail, I usually find 10 to 12 in any given museum. I can always spot them, even from a great distance. The thing is, I had no clue what he looked like, as I’m sure most people don’t. So here he is making his debut on Instagram. Handsome bugger.
Spring
Springtime projects.
Bunny Girl
A Tommy Kane portrait is always a missed opportunity in getting proportions correct. That problem seems to be his strength.
End Of Fish
According to Wikipedia, the total number of fishing vessels in the world is now about 4.6 million. That is an awful lot of very effective ships vacuuming up every living thing for miles around their perimeters on a daily basis. About 20 to 30% of the global catch is done by illegal and unregulated fishing boats. With about 2.5 trillion fish caught globally each year, they don’t stand a chance against our efficiently. I’m not sure proving we can catch everything in the ocean is anything to celebrate. Greenpeace estimates that every year, more than 640,000 tons of nets, lines, pots and traps used in commercial fishing are dumped and discarded in the sea. 6% of all nets used, 9% of all traps and 29% of all longlines (fishing lines that are several miles long) remain as physical pollution dumped at sea. It took me a while to figure out that mankind is trying to replace all the living creatures of the ocean with plastic trash. Victory will soon be at hand. I wonder what kind of fish will be the last one standing.
Spring
My annual spring drawing. There are a few flowers in Brooklyn.
Seaspiracy
Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and he’ll empty the oceans by 2050 and we’ll all die.
You should teach a man to cook lentils.
Conspiracy
The documentary, Cowspiracy, is the reason I became vegan five and a half years ago. You can give it a viewing on Netflix or Amazon Prime. A life changer.
Squirrel
My newest squirrel logo.
Chimpclop
Animals have a keen instinct and are under no illusions that we are doing everything to push them all to extinction. Unfortunately, slowly but surely we are succeeding. Even Chimpanzees, who humans love to dress up just like people, are under stress for survival. I guess the pandemic has made us feel like we are just trying to survive too. I would have to say that I’m not much help at all. In fact, I’m useless. The only thing I do is write dumb snippets and post them to the instaweb to make myself feel bad.
Deer Fish
When we do damage to the land, then that in turn reeks havoc on our oceans. That’s because the sea bone is connected to the land bone.
Sale
I put some originals for sale on Etsy. Look for The Tommy Kane Store by tkane9 on Etsy, obviously. About a dozen sold already. Sorry about that.
Industrial Fishing
Most people don’t like to think of the oceans as being in peril. It’s much nicer to think of them as self-sustaining. There still seems to be plenty of fish. I can get sushi whenever I want. Heck, I can even buy takeout sushi boxes at any 7 Eleven or Trader Joe’s. The World Wildlife Fund reports there are half the number of fish in the ocean as there was 50 years ago. That would be 1970. So, it would be helpful to the pretty ocean if we all cut down on the number of fish that’s consumed. So instead of daydreaming about how full the ocean is of endless schools of fish, think more about the glass being half empty. Watch the documentary, SEASPIRACY on Netflix starting March 24th.
