Wairarapa Midweek Wed 24th Feb

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Wairarapa’s locally owned community newspaper

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 2021

INSIDE: Car ter ton house prices reach new record high P10

Roddy McKenzie dies P3 ARE YOU A VIP CUSTOMER?

ichmond Funeral Home Peter and Jenny Giddens

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Painting cats galore Erin Kavanagh-Hall When the world started falling apart in 2020, Featherston artist Campbell Kneale was in dire need of a laugh. So, he started painting cats - in

all their jittery, contemptuous, eccentric glory. What started as a welcome distraction from a global health and social justice crisis has become something of a local phenomenon:

I like to paint them snarky, neurotic, a bit off-kilter – with one eye bigger than the other, tongue out, one fang visible.

Campbell’s cat paintings have not only been a hit in his hometown but have been in hot demand around the world. Campbell, a long-time painter and experimental musician, started sharing his creations on Facebook last May. He would post the image and the music he was listening to while painting - for example, “Motley Crue, painting cats.” The cats in question had plenty of character, casting withering glances, caught in undignified poses while bathing, foultempered inside

“cones of shame”, and taking in the world with startled, bulging eyes. As cat pictures on the internet tend to do, Campbell’s artworks went viral. With his inbox flooded with commission requests, and cats shipped off as far away as the US, Japan, Denmark, Italy and Ukraine [“and heaps to Dunedin”], he was eventually able to devote himself full time to cat paintings. He even has an alias – dubbed “Catman” by his fellow Featherstonians. “I like to think

Catman is a banal superhero,” Campbell laughed. “He’s my alter ego, Campbell just does a lot of rubbish, while Catman is a champion of kitsch; an unapologetic symbol of modernday banality and irreverence.” Catman first emerged towards the end of last year’s lockdown – feeling overwhelmed by

news coverage of the pandemic, Campbell did some therapeutic scribbling and drew some cats in his notebook. “They were so silly – I laughed until I teared up. It was a lovely detox. “I went ahead and painted a cat and put it on my Facebook.

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Left: Painted while listening to Donna Summer. Right: Painted while listening to Caveman Cult. PHOTOS/SUPPLIED

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