The Mushy Peas Artist

For someone who enjoys being creative, I find art rather baffling. So when I do find a painting that captivates me, I usually make a point to add them to my small list of favourites.

Cor Blok has now become one of these. He is probably best known (although being "best known" does not necessarily mean that you are well known at all) as the artist who painted over 100 pictures of The Lord of the Rings and when he showed a small collection of them to Tolkien, the author said they were attractive, but "bad as illustrations". Others have described Blok's work as "childish", in both positive and negative ways.

If you've come this far, you're probably curious now. Here's an example of Blok's work:

The Cow Jumped Over the Moon - Cor Blok

I once watched one of those addictive TV reality series' in which ordinary men and women are made to cook extraordinary dishes in order to win some form of a prize. One of the contestants decided that she was going to serve up mushy peas. That's right: peas that have been rendered soft and unattractive. The judges were perplexed, taken aback...and impressed. The audacity of it! Serving mushy peas as a delicacy! In the end, the contestant was commended on grounds that the peas were actually quite good, and she went on to the next level.

When I saw Blok's work, I immediately thought of the mushy pea incident. For here was the same brand of audaciousness. For all those who haven't been able to recognize what this picture is supposed to depict, it's the scene at The Prancing Pony in which Frodo dons the ring for the first time and disappears. Now can you see it?

It's childish, almost smacking of comic-material, but the characters, for all their simplicity, are recognizable. There's Strider in the black, looking mysterious. And Frodo in the centre in the midst of disappearing. And the patrons of The Prancing Pony in various stages of shock as they behold the scene. Only much later do you realize that they're not even sitting in chairs. Cor Blok apparently deemed chairs unnecessary to the scene and had the patrons sitting in mid-air instead. The audacity!

Yet, I couldn't help but enjoy it. Some part of me was laughing when I saw it. I didn't care that the scene was incomplete, or that the painting was "childish". I understood it! And to me, that's what art is: this ability to evoke a sense of kinship, whether through humour or sadness, between the artist and the viewer. This is something I continue to aspire to with my own creations and will continue to use that as a measure of success in this strange world of art.

You can view more of Cor Blok's work here: www.corblok.com