Girl Eats Sun: Background story to the artwork for Hope Tala

I was contacted in the summer of 2020 to work with Hope Tala on creating some album art for her EP Girl Eats Sun.

When I asked if she was the “girl” in the title, she confirmed my suspicion and I knew I had to incorporate a portrait of her into the artwork.

She gave me a list of song titles — Girl Eats Sun, All My Girls Like To Fight, Crazy, Drugstore, Easy To Love Me, Mulholland and Cherries. I though, why not use these titles as the source for the imagery on the cover as well. So each song title became symbolically represented and combined with the image of Hope herself. Each title conjured a rich image in my mind that fit perfectly with my quirky way of painting in my pop surrealism style. I worked up a rough sketch that blended all the seperate images into one big scene of craziness.

I got Hope’s blessings on my sketch and I jumped into the painting with both feet. Everything came together into one big, bright unified image—reminiscent of psychedelic art from the 1960s. The exaggerated colour and playful characters help give the painting an undeniable sense of crazy fun.

I’ll let you figure out the rest for yourself.

Interview in Euphoria

Interview in House of Solo

Hope Tala on Twitter

Hope Tala on Instagram

Stephen Gibb on Instagram

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Sideshow Allegory of Carnival Knowledge – Stephen Gibb, 36″ x 24″, oil on panel, 2023

For those who dare venture beyond the safety and comfort of stephengibb.com…
some of my fave links, inspirations…and others who have paid me off

Links and inspirations

Redbubble – Prints, Phone Cases, T-Shirts etc.

Bubblegum Surrealism

Stephen Gibb facebook page

Stephen Gibb — Instagram

St. Germain Gallery, Toronto — Artwork available

Saatchi — Prints available

Sideshow Fine Arts, Los Angeles — Prints Available

Blog Posts

Recent Paintings

Miscellaneous:

Deviant Art

La Luz de Jesus Gallery

Meltdown Comics & Gallery

Subtext Gallery

Surrealism Today

Allmusic

Arts Journal Daily

Canadian Surrealism

Album Art:

Trippie Redd — Life’s A Trip album art

Hope Tala — Girl Eats Sun album art

XXL magazine’s top album covers…

Some Artists you should check out:

Gale Hart

Laurie Lipton

Brandon Steen

Mark Ryden

Frantic preservation of essence in the face of imminent contamination – Stephen Gibb, oil on panel, 2015

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Thank you for joining us in the off-kilter world of Stephen Gibb, where surrealism and Mother Goose are turned on their heads. Take time to explore and ponder his mysterious paintings, that delve into the anxieties and joys of contemporary life, his musing on human behaviour, philosophy, and the innermost workings of his angular mind. Let’s hear from the artist himself…

Artist’s Statement
(Or, at least a feeble attempt to excuse my behaviour to those present with good taste)
My artwork weaves an eclectic tapestry of cultural and social influences. At one moment it may make a
single-punch-line commentary on pop culture, while the next it may construct a complex and playful diorama
probing into the outer perimeters of human nature.

My work is often categorized as pop surrealism but I’d begrudgingly prefer to tag it as existential editorial
cartoon realism, just because it sounds more intelligent, pretentious and funny at the same time. The work holds
a certain reverence and faithfulness to mimicking reality but leans far enough away to fall in the shadow of the
“uncanny valley*”, the area where the mind is unsettled by what looks real enough but couldn’t possible
be. It is in this realm, theoretically, that the mind’s gamma waves are super-stimulated and brain activity
resembles exploding fireworks. I resolve that this accounts for the broad reactions my work garners from observers,
that ranges from contemptuous dismissal to enthusiastic exuberance. We are all wired differently.

The medium is the method, which has been a faithful deployment of oil painting and traditional oil painting
techniques, such as glazing and the occasional dalliance into chiaroscuro. The richness achieved
by layers of thinned oil paint on wood panels always adds an interesting luminous vitality to the final
piece.

My direction as of late has been to devote more to composing on the panels rather than in pre-sketches.
I’m intrigued by the more spontaneous and gratifying results of ideas presenting themselves in the process
rather than in the planning, hence the falloff in the recent output of sketches. Often a core image or
concept dictates subliminally as to how the composition manifests itself.

Links, Inspirations

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