Waste of Paint: Callen Schaub

Who is Callen Schaub?

Callen Schaub, one of the popular Canadian contemporary artists of our era, has become popular via Instagram and he started crafting his art in this medium. He also presents his art interactively throughout Canada and America, taking part in numerous workshops and showcasing his art. Until now, the artist held both group and solo events in some of the most famous cities for contemporary art, such as New York, Miami, Los Angeles, and Toronto.

Image 1: Callen Schaub a solo workshop

Schaub’s Methodology

He utilizes the medium of Instagram with such efficiency that his works become video works as well, in the process, thereby creating a much more effective product. The reason behind this is that you get to see the methodology and the process of his creations. He does not cherry-pick what he showcases, sharing both his successful works and the ones where his luck runs out or where he fails to achieve the visual greatness that he holds to himself. Doing so he aims to underline the importance of never giving up, and raising from the ground where we fall and try again.

Image 2: Callen Schaub’s “Spin” technique.

Schaub created a platform using the pieces he gathered from wrecking his bicycle and put a canvas on top of this platform. He then pours paint over this canvas, using devices of his creation that are suspended from the ceiling. He puts paint in these devices and swings them in a random manner creating artworks of a coincidental nature. Thus his works become a series of unique paintings, impossible to copy or duplicate. Also, Schaub thinks that the less intervention he has on a painting, the better the work becomes. He stresses that each random pattern that may be found on these canvases of his are part of our nature’s marvellous observable beauties. He thinks of his paintings as a living being in the process of making, and when they are hung on the wall, that is the moment they die.

Image 3: Schaub, Callen (2021), Burgeon.

Schaub also attracts criticism some of which state that he is a fake artist as he is using devices and a huge amount of paint through the process of his creation. Using this harsh criticism, especially those he gathered from Instagram, he created the series named “Fake Art”. The series which drowns unpleasant criticisms with colourful paint jobs can be interpreted as a counter-criticism to the ones he got. Schaub also believes that in all bad spirited behaviour, there is part of a soul waiting to be understood, to be empathized with.

Image 4: Schaub’s “Fake Art” themed work named “Brave Child”.

Looking from a Wider Angle

Approaching a much broader question here, what do we gather to be art? Does it have a definition? Or is it something that cannot fit into any mould? Is art something that the artist, by whatever means, presents to the audience? It is of course impossible to give a subjective answer to all this. All in all, everyone’s reception and presentation of art changes from person to person. These differences don’t make any work of art better than the other. As art cannot be without society, art also cannot be without the phenomenon called art. While any part of nature cannot be called a work of art, when you put it in a context it turns into art. So maybe the question is not what art is, but what we attribute as being art…

NOTE: You may reach the works of the artist through this site.

 Author: Başak Hürer