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2024 paintings

Index of paintings by Stephen Gibb

2024 paintings

What is painting and why do I paint

To understand the object as a symbol the viewer must disengage from the object and penetrate beyond its visual representation to extract its significance from the volumes of connotation held within. To say a picture is worth a thousand words is to impose a limitation on its potential.

What my paintings offer is a chance for the viewer to construct their own narrative based on the connotations and associations they may derive from the imagery, regardless of my motivations for painting it.

Understand, there are no drugs involved and no psychedelic experimentation. Along with my natural neurological makeup, I have conditioned my mind to think in a way that allows bizarre connections and associations to combine with seemingly disparate objects — all coming together with meaning and signification.

Stephen Gibb lives and works in southern Ontario, Canada. He earned a B.F.A. in visual arts from the University of Windsor and is currently represented by the St. Germain gallery in Toronto. Among the cities he has exhibited in are San Diego, Sacramento, and Hollywood— the hotbed of California’s Lowbrow and Pop Surrealism community. His work is collected around the globe and has gained widening interest since working on the album art for hip hop artist Trippie Redd.

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Psychopathology of Wants and Needs – Pop surrealism painting by Canadian Artist Stephen Gibb, 36″ x 24″, oil on panel, 2022

This painting started off a few light years away from where it ended up. The original concept was to do something around the theme of “bliss”, examining the things that bring us to this occasionally visited state of mind.

I envisioned a head absorbing the things around it, which would have been things that evoke the state of bliss in people. The head became a skull, full of holes because it just seemed like a cool idea. I think sometimes the things that people seek to attain their blissful state can also be deadly and I liked the “ultimate conclusion” commentary by including the skull, acknowledging it as the final destination of bliss and of life.

Everything I came up with just seemed lame after that. So, I thought I’d explore the foundations of why we seek bliss. It occurred to me that maybe there was something in Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs that could give some insight into the concept.

This is where I abandoned the whole bliss theme.

Instead, I focused on representations of “needs” in my typical left-field approach, bubblegum surrealism style. A trivialized representation of food (sustenance) became a pie, which I doubled back on, posing the pie in the act of replicating himself…rolling out some dough for a crust. Reproduction is on the lower level on Maslow’s hierarchy and is represented by the pie and the gooey union of the two lolly pops, who produce offspring at the point of their sticky embrace. The progeny then takes an ironic bite out of the parent in an act of defiance and rebellion — the normal function of a teenager (LOL). At the far right a figure looks at his fingers as they produce offspring, which appear to just be fodder for the crow standing nearby (the circle of life).

The figure on the far right also represents clothing, shelter, property, security, which are lower, basic requirements according to Maslow.

The sleeping potato symbolizes, sleep, air and water — also basic needs, in spite of the absurdity of the situation.

As we move upward the needs become more abstract and less material. The two lollies could represent love, intimacy, family and connection, whereas the green lolly’s floating-away crown touches on the area Maslow characterized as “esteem”, the realm of status, recognition and self-esteem, things I think our society puts too much stock in. As well we put absurd value on wants versus needs and a title was suggested to me — The Psychopathology of Need and Wants.

At the right side of the mountain is Sisyphus as an ape, pushing a large brain up the incline, symbolizing evolution, strength and the struggle to raise the “required needs” to the pinnacle of the hierarchy, which is represented by the pyramid man at the top, radiating out to embrace everything in his “blissful” state of self-actualization. - Artist Stephen Gibb, Nov., 2022

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