Drawing inspiration from the left, right and wrong

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This article was published 01/08/2024 (725 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

For most of his life, Chris Chuckry has been called an artist. At his father’s funeral, he was identified differently.

“I was introduced to someone as the cartoonist,” says Chuckry, whose father, Harry — a longtime schoolteacher who later in life became a priest — died last month at the age of 88.

It’s a badge Chuckry wears with pride. After decades working as a comic book artist, graphic novel colourist and illustrator, Chuckry, who draws from a riverside home studio in Elm Park, was inspired by the outlandish, unbelievable circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic to combine his artistic skill set and his sense of collective ethics.

He became a political cartoonist because the line between democracy and lunacy was so frequently blurred in both the Canadian House of Commons and in the common Canadian home.

As toilet paper was stacked and stowed, while politicians blathered and bickered and as truckers took a misguided and overlong pitstop down yonder on Broadway, Chuckry sharpened his pencil and got to work.

“I was looking for a new daily art practice, and let’s just say I was frustrated with how the pandemic was being handled,” he told the Free Press in September 2021.

Bam! Overnight, the mild-mannered, middle-aged father and college art instructor became an invaluable source of insight, unexpected laughter and shared catharsis to a growing legion of social media followers, distilling the sloppy trough of news of the day into single panels marked by a transparent sense of left, right and downright wrong.

Now, four years after first donning the political cartoonist’s cape, 54 pieces of Chuckry’s locally, nationally and internationally inspired artwork is on display at the Cre8ery gallery (125 Adelaide St.) as part of a solo exhibition called Politically Drawn.

It’s his third show at the gallery, but the first to feature only his cartoon work. Everything is available for purchase.

Since starting his side gig, Chuckry estimates he’s drawn over 600 individual cartoons, posting them for free while developing a progressive and progressing reflection of four years of political developments.

Of his output, Chuckry says, “I’m no Michael de Adder,” referencing the nationally syndicated, Moncton-based cartoonist.

But Chuckry is being modest. He has been there to outline in ink his view of key political events. Bungled vaccine rollouts? — you bet. Contentious party leadership races? — yes sir. Inattentive drivers blaming cyclists for injuries they themselves caused? — uh huh. Pierre? He’s there. Heather? Roger that. Putin? Chuckry’s output has been steady as the Volga.

Chuckry has also continued his other work, teaching part-time at Red River Polytechnic.

“The comic book work keeps me busy. I’m working on a series called Tin Can Society for Image Comics. It’s a murder mystery where the main character has spina bifida and becomes a hero. It looks gorgeous,” he says.

“I’m also working on another project called Sacred Creatures about the seven deadly sins made real as humans who walk amongst us.”

This summer, Chuckry has been spending a great deal of time with his family, relaxing last weekend at a cottage rental in Sandy Bay. But since joining the ranks of Arch Dale, Dale Cummings and Peter Kuch as Manitoban political cartoonists, Chuckry’s learned an eternally relevant lesson: politics never takes a holiday, even if politicians do.

ben.waldman@winnipegfreepress.com