Untitled Document

MONTREAL -

If you want to meet the most successful painter in the history of the country, take the Trans-Canada Highway to the west island of Montreal, locate a two-storey, white brick building in an ordinary industrial park, and wander around until you find unit G. The isolation goes nicely with the anonymity. Successful, of course, is not synonymous with famous. For famous, you might choose a name such as Riopelle, Thomson, Carr, Pratt or Colville. But Eric Dennis Waugh has likely sold more canvases than all of them -- combined. In fact, he's sold more paintings, by far, than anyone else in Canada (and in most other countries as well).

Eric Dennis who? Exactly. Let's start with this: At the age of 38, Waugh has sold -- the precise number is unclear -- more than 15,000 works. Let me save you reaching for the calculator: that's more than three paintings a day, every day, for 13 years. Who else can make that claim? Pablo Picasso, maybe -- but he painted for nine decades, into his 90s. The American landscape artist Thomas Kincaid has probably sold more widely, but many of these works are not-so-limited-edition prints, endlessly reproduced, art as assembly-line widget. Virtually all of Waugh's work is original. And yet until late November, when he gained international exposure for setting a new Guinness world record -- the largest painting created by a single artist -- Waugh was essentially unknown. He still is. You can scour long Web-site lists of Canadian painters, designers and mixed-media artists without finding a single mention of his name. We are accustomed, of course, to thinking about the world of art in a certain way. The paradigm is the starving, angst-ridden artist, alone in his heat-challenged garret. He wrestles with inner demons -- drugs, women, procrastination -- torn between the imperatives of paying the gas bill and giving expression to the profundities of his innermost soul.

A finished canvas leaves him exhilarated, but spent and full of doubt. Will he be able to sell it? Will anyone recognize his genius? Can he do it again? In his spare time, he haunts galleries, studying the masters in search of inspiration. In almost every way, Waugh is the absolute antithesis of this model. He rarely goes to art galleries ("One day I will," he says. "I'm too busy now.") and never worries whence his next meal will come. Polished, polite, confident, well-spoken, he lives happily with his wife, Dini, and three sons in a modest home in suburban Dollard-des-Ormeaux, a five-minute drive from his studio. On any given day, he can start -- and complete -- as many as 10 separate works, usually abstract acrylic and mixed media pieces on paper. When finished, he ships them to his agent, Michael Havers, president of Toronto-based Progressive Editions Ltd.; Havers buys everything he sees and sells everything he buys, eventually -- to private collectors, to galleries in the United States and Europe, and to such blue-chip corporations as American Express and Hyatt Hotels.

From a bank-account point of view, Waugh is a very comfortable man. Although, like other artists, Waugh often lies awake at night visualizing his next canvas, there is no apparent stress involved. The ideas seem to flow from him like tap water. When he looks at his studio table of empty framed canvases -- he typically paints on flat surfaces, rather than at an easel -- his eye already sees the completed work. When he paints, his hand hovers over the paper for a moment, like a sprinter waiting for the starter's pistol, and then he's off. In his current phase, which is based on stick figures, often with a musical theme, he lays down the basic line in black crayon, injects a dash or two of colour, smears a clear gel across the canvas to lend texture, adds a series of gold dots, a feature of almost every work -- et voilà, on to the next one.

On the morning I visited his studio, he was working on three pieces more or less simultaneously, thematically similar but distinct. His art, like his own approach to life, is resolutely upbeat, hopeful. "Energetic . . . graceful . . . dynamic and very positive -- perhaps this is the best way to describe the works of artist Eric Waugh," says one Arizonan distributor. "[His] creative viewpoint scans the horizons of a glowing future and brings that vision to the reality of a work of art." Modest, self-effacing, whatever ego he has is carefully held in check: The work speaks for itself. A significant amount of his time and work is devoted to charity. All proceeds from the sale of Hero, his 41,400-square-foot Guinness-record painting -- at 230-feet high, it's taller than the Statue of Liberty -- have been donated to three foundations, helping children with AIDS and HIV. Hero was originally conceived as a fundraising poster for Camp Heartland, one of the three charities, after Waugh watched a TV movie about children suffering from AIDS. He contacted the camp, which is in Minnesota, flew down to visit and offered to help. The poster took him a mere 90 minutes to design and complete -- an abstract of an adult comforting a child. Five years ago, hoping to raise more funds, he seized on the notion of turning the poster into mega-art. Each half-inch became a five-foot-square panel -- 1,656 panels in all. With more than 200 volunteers, the piece was assembled and unveiled on the back lawn of the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh on Dec. 1, World AIDS Day. When the last panel was laid in place, Waugh broke down. "I just totally lost it. I was actually down on the ground for a few minutes. It was very emotional, like being in labour for five years.

" Now, Art.com is selling the panels, each of them signed by Waugh; as of the middle of December, about $50,000 (U.S.) had been raised, but the campaign target is $4-million. This month, at his own cost, Waugh will embark on a U.S. Hero media tour of schools and colleges to promote sales. Every year, Waugh also designs Christmas cards for both Camp Heartland and the Starlight Children's Foundation. For the latter, in the Montreal area alone, Waugh's card has raised $90,000 (Canadian). Every years, he gives away dozens of works to charities and friends. Putting a price on the work, selling it, seems to make him uncomfortable. "I want my art to say something and mean something," he says. "But I also want to use it as a tool for helping people." Other than in high school, where he often found himself teaching his teachers, Waugh has never studied art. Born in Montreal, and raised in Winnipeg and Burlington, Ont., he says that art was always his favourite subject. If he was preparing a project on dinosaurs, for example, he would labour most over its presentation, not content. (The talent seems to be in his genes. Both parents are artistic, a grandfather painted pastel landscapes for the Hudson's Bay Co., and his older brother, Bruce, is a championship sand, snow and pumpkin sculptor.) Even now, it's not uncommon for Waugh to go to movies and emerge with no clear idea of the plot line or even who the actors were -- his eyes are fixated on colours, textures, angles and design. It's almost as though his eyes encounter a different world. When he looks at a jazz combo, for example, he doesn't really see the corporeal form -- he sees only the lines, the same lines that appear in his work. For all that, he never seriously entertained the notion of becoming a professional artist. Such an ambition, he assumed, was an invitation to poverty. Instead, Waugh went to work as a graphic designer for Marka, a Toronto packaging house. When he had trouble finding outside artists to illustrate concepts, he started doing them himself. "That's sort of my attitude to life," he says. "I like to do things myself." Self-taught, he does all his own drywall, plumbing, electrical work and tiling. In 1988, in his mid-20s, Waugh decided to go freelance, but soon met an economic recession that dried up demand for his talent. For the first and only time, he struggled -- five months arrears in rent, a business loan overdue. "It was really tough. I had to do something else. There was no work." It was Waugh's brother Bruce, then a sales representative for Havers, who suggested that he take a run at fine art. With push coming to shove, Waugh used the last $6 in his savings account, bought one piece of art paper, three jars of paint and two brushes, and produced an abstract painting. Borrowing money to frame it, he took it to Havers, who said he saw potential. "A nice way of saying it wasn't very good," Waugh says with a laugh. But Havers offered to cover the cost of producing more art. In the next two weeks, Waugh produced a dozen abstracts, landscapes and figurative works. "It just seemed to flow." When Havers called, he said: "I've sold half of them, come down and pick up your cheque and keep painting." The cheque was for $1,200; it felt, Waugh says, like winning the lottery.

Since then, he's been trying to meet the incessant demand, and has been consistently at the top of Progressive Editions sales. "People find it hard to understand -- art is supposed to be a tough job -- but for some reason, when it comes out of my head to the paper, it just flows. It's just very natural. At times, I feel like I'm channelling. And the faster I go, the better it gets, artistically. If I work longer on a piece, it loses spontaneity and energy." Not surprisingly, Havers is full of praise. "Eric has a wonderful personality," he says. "He can get up and talk to people. None of this has gone to his head. He's always working and he's constantly developing." Of course, some people might suggest that what Waugh produces, though indisputably popular, isn't the sort of art that might hang in museums or on the walls of serious collectors. Havers strongly demurs. "We could easily get him in [a museum] by donating work. That's how a lot of artists get there. But Eric is not focused on that. It's a very complicated game, the art market. Many artists aren't noticed until they die or after." At one time, he notes, Picasso -- arguably the great artist of the 20th century -- sold his work in the United States in Sears department stores, not exactly the acme of discriminating taste. "I was just in San Francisco and there were pieces we saw that would sell here for $1,000 on the wall for $20,000 [U.S.]. Who's to say who is great and who isn't?"

What's ahead? The same and more. With a writing partner, Lisa Wolk, Waugh has recently completed a set of 10 children's stories, Matt and Jack the Cat, based on a normal, wholesome, middle-class suburban family not unlike his own. Although they're just now shopping for a publisher, this venture, I expect, will soon become a mini-industry, complete with sheets, towels, pens and toys. As for his art, Waugh says he's about to embark on a new phase, perhaps working with oils. His brain is teeming with ideas. "Even when I go to bed, I sometimes wake up exhausted," he says, "because I'm creating all night long in my sleep."



News Main Articles Television and Radio appearances	This man might be the world's best-selling artist, You've probably never heard of him. By MICHAEL POSNER Thursday, January 3, 2002 – The Globe and Mail MONTREAL - If you want to meet the most successful painter in the history of the country, take the Trans-Canada Highway to the west island of Montreal, locate a two-storey, white brick building in an ordinary industrial park, and wander around until you find unit G. The isolation goes nicely with the anonymity. Successful, of course, is not synonymous with famous. For famous, you might choose a name such as Riopelle, Thomson, Carr, Pratt or Colville. But Eric Dennis Waugh has likely sold more canvases than all of them -- combined. In fact, he's sold more paintings, by far, than anyone else in Canada (and in most other countries as well). Eric Dennis who? Exactly. Let's start with this: At the age of 38, Waugh has sold -- the precise number is unclear -- more than 15,000 works. Let me save you reaching for the calculator: that's more than three paintings a day, every day, for 13 years. Who else can make that claim? Pablo Picasso, maybe -- but he painted for nine decades, into his 90s. The American landscape artist Thomas Kincaid has probably sold more widely, but many of these works are not-so-limited-edition prints, endlessly reproduced, art as assembly-line widget. Virtually all of Waugh's work is original. And yet until late November, when he gained international exposure for setting a new Guinness world record -- the largest painting created by a single artist -- Waugh was essentially unknown. He still is. You can scour long Web-site lists of Canadian painters, designers and mixed-media artists without finding a single mention of his name. We are accustomed, of course, to thinking about the world of art in a certain way. The paradigm is the starving, angst-ridden artist, alone in his heat-challenged garret. He wrestles with inner demons -- drugs, women, procrastination -- torn between the imperatives of paying the gas bill and giving expression to the profundities of his innermost soul. A finished canvas leaves him exhilarated, but spent and full of doubt. Will he be able to sell it? Will anyone recognize his genius? Can he do it again? In his spare time, he haunts galleries, studying the masters in search of inspiration. In almost every way, Waugh is the absolute antithesis of this model. He rarely goes to art galleries ("One day I will," he says. "I'm too busy now.") and never worries whence his next meal will come. Polished, polite, confident, well-spoken, he lives happily with his wife, Dini, and three sons in a modest home in suburban Dollard-des-Ormeaux, a five-minute drive from his studio. On any given day, he can start -- and complete -- as many as 10 separate works, usually abstract acrylic and mixed media pieces on paper. When finished, he ships them to his agent, Michael Havers, president of Toronto-based Progressive Editions Ltd.; Havers buys everything he sees and sells everything he buys, eventually -- to private collectors, to galleries in the United States and Europe, and to such blue-chip corporations as American Express and Hyatt Hotels. From a bank-account point of view, Waugh is a very comfortable man. Although, like other artists, Waugh often lies awake at night visualizing his next canvas, there is no apparent stress involved. The ideas seem to flow from him like tap water. When he looks at his studio table of empty framed canvases -- he typically paints on flat surfaces, rather than at an easel -- his eye already sees the completed work. When he paints, his hand hovers over the paper for a moment, like a sprinter waiting for the starter's pistol, and then he's off. In his current phase, which is based on stick figures, often with a musical theme, he lays down the basic line in black crayon, injects a dash or two of colour, smears a clear gel across the canvas to lend texture, adds a series of gold dots, a feature of almost every work -- et voilà, on to the next one. On the morning I visited his studio, he was working on three pieces more or less simultaneously, thematically similar but distinct. His art, like his own approach to life, is resolutely upbeat, hopeful. "Energetic . . . graceful . . . dynamic and very positive -- perhaps this is the best way to describe the works of artist Eric Waugh," says one Arizonan distributor. "[His] creative viewpoint scans the horizons of a glowing future and brings that vision to the reality of a work of art." Modest, self-effacing, whatever ego he has is carefully held in check: The work speaks for itself. A significant amount of his time and work is devoted to charity. All proceeds from the sale of Hero, his 41,400-square-foot Guinness-record painting -- at 230-feet high, it's taller than the Statue of Liberty -- have been donated to three foundations, helping children with AIDS and HIV. Hero was originally conceived as a fundraising poster for Camp Heartland, one of the three charities, after Waugh watched a TV movie about children suffering from AIDS. He contacted the camp, which is in Minnesota, flew down to visit and offered to help. The poster took him a mere 90 minutes to design and complete -- an abstract of an adult comforting a child. Five years ago, hoping to raise more funds, he seized on the notion of turning the poster into mega-art. Each half-inch became a five-foot-square panel -- 1,656 panels in all. With more than 200 volunteers, the piece was assembled and unveiled on the back lawn of the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh on Dec. 1, World AIDS Day. When the last panel was laid in place, Waugh broke down. "I just totally lost it. I was actually down on the ground for a few minutes. It was very emotional, like being in labour for five years. " Now, Art.com is selling the panels, each of them signed by Waugh; as of the middle of December, about $50,000 (U.S.) had been raised, but the campaign target is $4-million. This month, at his own cost, Waugh will embark on a U.S. Hero media tour of schools and colleges to promote sales. Every year, Waugh also designs Christmas cards for both Camp Heartland and the Starlight Children's Foundation. For the latter, in the Montreal area alone, Waugh's card has raised $90,000 (Canadian). Every years, he gives away dozens of works to charities and friends. Putting a price on the work, selling it, seems to make him uncomfortable. "I want my art to say something and mean something," he says. "But I also want to use it as a tool for helping people." Other than in high school, where he often found himself teaching his teachers, Waugh has never studied art. Born in Montreal, and raised in Winnipeg and Burlington, Ont., he says that art was always his favourite subject. If he was preparing a project on dinosaurs, for example, he would labour most over its presentation, not content. (The talent seems to be in his genes. Both parents are artistic, a grandfather painted pastel landscapes for the Hudson's Bay Co., and his older brother, Bruce, is a championship sand, snow and pumpkin sculptor.) Even now, it's not uncommon for Waugh to go to movies and emerge with no clear idea of the plot line or even who the actors were -- his eyes are fixated on colours, textures, angles and design. It's almost as though his eyes encounter a different world. When he looks at a jazz combo, for example, he doesn't really see the corporeal form -- he sees only the lines, the same lines that appear in his work. For all that, he never seriously entertained the notion of becoming a professional artist. Such an ambition, he assumed, was an invitation to poverty. Instead, Waugh went to work as a graphic designer for Marka, a Toronto packaging house. When he had trouble finding outside artists to illustrate concepts, he started doing them himself. "That's sort of my attitude to life," he says. "I like to do things myself." Self-taught, he does all his own drywall, plumbing, electrical work and tiling. In 1988, in his mid-20s, Waugh decided to go freelance, but soon met an economic recession that dried up demand for his talent. For the first and only time, he struggled -- five months arrears in rent, a business loan overdue. "It was really tough. I had to do something else. There was no work." It was Waugh's brother Bruce, then a sales representative for Havers, who suggested that he take a run at fine art. With push coming to shove, Waugh used the last $6 in his savings account, bought one piece of art paper, three jars of paint and two brushes, and produced an abstract painting. Borrowing money to frame it, he took it to Havers, who said he saw potential. "A nice way of saying it wasn't very good," Waugh says with a laugh. But Havers offered to cover the cost of producing more art. In the next two weeks, Waugh produced a dozen abstracts, landscapes and figurative works. "It just seemed to flow." When Havers called, he said: "I've sold half of them, come down and pick up your cheque and keep painting." The cheque was for $1,200; it felt, Waugh says, like winning the lottery. Since then, he's been trying to meet the incessant demand, and has been consistently at the top of Progressive Editions sales. "People find it hard to understand -- art is supposed to be a tough job -- but for some reason, when it comes out of my head to the paper, it just flows. It's just very natural. At times, I feel like I'm channelling. And the faster I go, the better it gets, artistically. If I work longer on a piece, it loses spontaneity and energy." Not surprisingly, Havers is full of praise. "Eric has a wonderful personality," he says. "He can get up and talk to people. None of this has gone to his head. He's always working and he's constantly developing." Of course, some people might suggest that what Waugh produces, though indisputably popular, isn't the sort of art that might hang in museums or on the walls of serious collectors. Havers strongly demurs. "We could easily get him in [a museum] by donating work. That's how a lot of artists get there. But Eric is not focused on that. It's a very complicated game, the art market. Many artists aren't noticed until they die or after." At one time, he notes, Picasso -- arguably the great artist of the 20th century -- sold his work in the United States in Sears department stores, not exactly the acme of discriminating taste. "I was just in San Francisco and there were pieces we saw that would sell here for $1,000 on the wall for $20,000 [U.S.]. Who's to say who is great and who isn't?" What's ahead? The same and more. With a writing partner, Lisa Wolk, Waugh has recently completed a set of 10 children's stories, Matt and Jack the Cat, based on a normal, wholesome, middle-class suburban family not unlike his own. Although they're just now shopping for a publisher, this venture, I expect, will soon become a mini-industry, complete with sheets, towels, pens and toys. As for his art, Waugh says he's about to embark on a new phase, perhaps working with oils. His brain is teeming with ideas. "Even when I go to bed, I sometimes wake up exhausted," he says, "because I'm creating all night long in my sleep."