The Calgary-based artist is making it his mission to celebrate and reclaim the forgotten genre by proving that still life is, well, still alive. In his own work, Clintberg makes use of the still form while exploring the relationship between public places and our feelings.

"I would have loved to have talked to Amy Winehouse. Her music was an inspiration to me. And I remember my parents coming home from seeing her in a club and just raving about her. She came from the same background as me, growing up in North London."

Until I encountered a lithograph of "Pacific" -- a 1967 painting of a shirtless man standing carefree and staring out to the ocean with his back turned to a handgun on a table -- I believed Canadian art was benign. Group of Seven landscapes were beautiful, but they were neither riveting nor cool in the way a 16-year-old would think art is cool. This? This was cool.

Pre-internet designers would traditionally either need a large company behind them or would have to settle for selling locally. These days the internet has leveled the playing field while also forcing designers to become multi-talented small business owners. The rules have changed.