No one paints losers like Michael Harrington. They can be seen alone, or in pathetic groupings, mumbling and grumbling, stuck in some pseudo-macho past, out of synch with the present and definitely with no happy future in sight.

Harrington’s canvases tend to be small. So all these aging monosyllabic nerds are like tiny impressionistic figures seen hazily through a telescope.  We are voyeurs peering into their club houses, pool halls, bars and campgrounds. Their only female companionship: Playboy centrefolds pasted to the walls of their dreary abodes. Those centrefolds are as  close as these guys will ever get to beautiful women unless their favourite spit-on-the-floor beer parlour happens to hire a cute waitress.

A new show of Harrington’s haunting works has opened at Galerie St. Laurent + Hill in the Market and continues until May 15. Harrington’s work is addictive. His fans are many. (more…)