The Soviet paintings eventually took over our house.

Most of them were small and

insanely inexpensive, and I bought dozens of them. The Soviet era produced its own
impressionism, often depicting landscapes, rougher and harsher than the classic
French
versions but much to my taste and reminiscent of where I grew up in western Canada.
While seeking them out, I exposed myself to a larger number of paintings, I like to
think,
than anyone else in history. For at least four years, starting in 2001, I searched eBay,
looking at roughly a thousand paintings a day,* seeking the one or two in that
number
that were of genuine quality. It was most often a Russian or Soviet landscape selling
for
a song—better paintings than I had ever seen in galleries or museum collections in
Toronto. I would place them in a list of items I was interested in—an eBay feature—
print
them out, lay them on the floor, and then ask my wife, Tammy, to help me narrow my
choices. She has a good eye and a fair bit of training as an artist. We would discard
anything we found to be flawed and purchase what remained. Because of this, my
kids
grew up surrounded by art, and it certainly left an impression. Many of my paintings
now hang in their respective dwellings. (They tended to avoid the more political
Soviet
propaganda, which I was interested in because of its historical significance and
because
of the ongoing war on the canvases between art—a consequence of the painter’s
undeniable talent—and the propaganda that art was doomed to serve. I can tell you
that
the art shines through the propaganda as the years pass by. That is something very
interesting to observe.)
I also tried, at about that time, to make my university office beautiful. After I was
transferred from an office I had already put some work into, the same artist who
helped
redesign the interior of our house (and from whom I also purchased many large
paintings, which also hang in our house) tried to help me transform my new factory-
like,
fluorescent-lit catastrophe of a 1970s sealed-windows hellhole office into something
that
someone with some sense could sit in for thirty years without wanting to die. Faculty
members were forbidden to undertake any major modifications to these spaces, due
to
union requirements (or administration interpretations of those requirements). So,
my
artist friend and I devised an alternate plan.
We decided to insert some heavy, nickel-plated hooks into the cinderblock, in pairs
about four feet apart and seven feet above the ground, and then to hang from those
hooks good three-quarter-inch sanded and stained wood sheets with cherry veneer on
one side. Voila: wood-paneled office, for the cost of about eight seventy-five-dollar
pieces of plywood, plus some labor. We were going to install these on a weekend,
when
there was no one else around. Then we planned to paint the drop ceilings (carefully,
as