Trashing Art - paintings with a due date

Peter Fyfe, Boy and child (1986)

Challenge – to blog consistently
Purpose – to reveal what I think about, because art without thought is mere decoration.
Warning – so, this is a blog, so it may be full of opinionated crap…But at least I’ll try to make it interesting crap.
 
I recently mentioned on Facebook that I had taken a painting, “A Boy And Child” (1986) to the city dump. By the time it hit the pile, it was not in retrievable condition, because the ‘Orillia Waste Diversion Site’ has separate piles for garbage, household wood, metal, tires (off rims), drywall etc, and I had done my duty by ripping the canvas from the frame. The wood went to the wood pile, the canvas (now torn into several pieces) went to the garbage pile.

Done as an art student, the painting features an empty, wooden-framed, gothic ‘window’ in the centre, so separating the canvas from the wood without ripping it would have been difficult.  Likewise, applying gesso to the work and starting anew would have meant dealing with that centre window. But creating a new work from the old was not the point. My intent all along was two-fold. To rid myself of an artistic anchor of the past, and to clean out storage in our house.

Don’t get me wrong. I liked that painting, as did several of those who responded on Facebook. But how else to dispose of it? It’s not like it’s to everyone’s taste. And being an older portrait of sorts, it’s not in keeping with my so-called ‘current work’, so exhibiting it with the intent of selling it seemed not an option. Keeping it around for a retrospective which is never going to happen, just keeps putting it in the way.
So, for those of you who have never wondered, now you know of a new question to ask your local artist… What do you do with works that have never been sold? Store ‘em, or trash ‘em? (Or repurpose them if that’s an option).
Sadly, there were two other works that went to the pile that same day (below). And there may be a few others on the chopping block. Please check out my older works at http://www.fyfeart.com/older-works.html (those marked with an *) before they too are gone.
 
Links
Rauschenberg, Francis Bacon, Gerhard Richte 
​https://www.widewalls.ch/destruction-art-artists-destroy-artwork/

Michelangelo, Monet, O’Keefe…
https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-6-artists-destroyed-art

​#artdestruction #studentpainting #artistswho #destroyart

Voice of Bird (1989)

Canada's Call to Women (1990), bricolage under glass

​Get Your Home in Canada (1990), bricolage under glass