Froze—by Canadian painter Stephen Gibb, 36″ x 36″, oil on panel, 2020

FROZE by Canadian painter Stephen Gibb

The balance between survival and our relation with the environment is a give and take negotiation at its simplest state. Depletion, plunder and by-products that result from our “processing” of resources are ways in which we impact the equilibrium. The responsible thing to do is minimized the negative legacy in favour of a renewable, sustainable outcome. Yet humans seem more adept at exploitation for greed and profit and waste is an inconvenient factor in the equation.
The emissions and pollution, the sewage and trash management of large cities is evidence of our excesses and ignorance. These were considerations that guided my painting “Froze”.

Reducing the composition to four basic characters, I focussed on the mood and the atmosphere of the painting more than a reliance on the narrative chaos that I typically rely on in my work. The frozen world above is giving way to the melting world below as the two central figures huddle for warmth and sustenance in a situation that is ironically contributing to their imminent peril. Just as human society has created the system of resource exploitation that is contributing to global warming and climate change, so do the central figures in the painting. The catch-22 created by the need for warmth for survival is also melting the ice, hastening their demise, as the voracious devil-like figure waits for his dinner below.

The fragile balance of life is often illuminated by taking an alternate perspective, and just as often it is obscured by ambiguity.

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Vengeful Wrath of the Chocolate Gods — 36″ x 24″, oil on panel

The vengeful god in the clouds is nothing new and most often is used in pop culture for humourous effect. It’s really an absurd notion—an angry god? So what could be more absurd than a god of chocolate? In ancient times (maybe even today) there were beliefs that sustained polytheism where a multitude of gods each have distinct functions—the god of the sea, the god of fire, the god of love. Why not a god of chocolate? I love chocolate and why shouldn’t it have its own deity lording over the domain of chocolate land.

The rest of the painting is just silly aspects of chocolate experiencing their chocolate reality—living, dying, being consumed and generally enjoying their chocolatyness.

This got me thinking about the creative process and how some simple prompt can lead you into depths unexplored. People often ask me where my ideas come from and through my grinding teeth I try to answer cordially. Thoughts, that’s all they are. Thoughts that get turned into images and recorded in oil paint—endless thoughts swirling all around you waiting to be plucked and converted into something wonderful.

Brian Eno had a system of cards called the Oblique Strategy cards he formulated with Peter Schmidt that essentially were simple thoughts or instructions designed to help promote creativity. I had been collecting a series of thoughts and when I discovered Eno’s cards, realized I was doing the same thing.

Although they could be construed as motivational in tone, if they are accessed during a point of creative stagnation, they may jump-start the creativity process back into high gear.

Here are my creativity-booster phrases. Pick one at random. Think of them as instructions to open your creative block — or Hallmark Cards from the Twilight Zone:

Surrealism Famous For Stimulating Creativity

Strip away the pre-supposed dignity of art

Celebrate the genius of the audience

Disrupt the universe in your own special way

Art is a veil of obfuscation hiding a prize

Rattle your mental cage and awaken the sleeping philosopher within

Defy the gravity of consciousness

Make art to be photographed and studied later

Challenge yourself with something counter-intuitive

Meditate on you idiosyncrasies

Hold the colour in your mind’s eye

Release yourself of fear by trapping it in your art

Look at clichés from different angles

Revisit a repressed thought

Contemplate the perspective of the art viewing the audience

Mine your soul for a gem to share

Loose yourself in the math of composition

Take the most obvious solution and do the opposite

Bask in the glow of the viewer’s confusion

Consider the chemistry of the brain

Hide something in plain sight

Portray the human side of evil

Invent your own dichotomy

Redirect in response to the last thing you created

Reach through the curtain of time and touch your younger self on the shoulder

Label an emotion that does not yet exist

Let the viewer know that you are watching

Make the art self-aware

Engineer tension

Set traps on the way to the most obvious conclusion

Derail a preconception

Expose a subtle notion with flamboyance

Direct attention to absurdity

Conceal a secret within the content

Distil the uncanny essence of ugliness

Pose a question and leave it hanging

Shine the light on an open-ended conclusion

Fearlessly diminish the precious

Invert the sacred and profane

Investigate a theme that terrifies you

Mock yourself

Listen closely to music that irritates you

Construct 10 answers to the question “Why?”

Let something random dictate direction

Abandon your gimmick

Create as if you are an abstractionist—if you are an abstractionist try surrealism

Look at the pure joy of futility

A childhood game is waiting to be rediscovered

Consider two outcomes and flip a coin

Make an imperfection a focal point

Share a memory of extreme profundity

Dare to confront your inner fool

Invent your own version of reality

Travel one second back in time

Stretch the rules just to the breaking point and let go

Try on a point of view in conflict with your own

Ask yourself a question and don’t answer back

Reduce your complexity to cave-dweller basics

View yourself from 100 years in the future

Sum up your process to a phantom biographer

Tell yourself it doesn’t really matter and is not that important

Let a ghost direct your hand

Contradict your present state of mind

Plan on taking one step forward and two steps back

Ponder the noise and listen for a message

Reflect on all the people you have encountered

Recall an idea you forgot that you forgot about

Surrealism Famous For Stimulating Creativity

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Surrealism Famous For Stimulating Creativity

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St. Germain Gallery: Featuring Stephen Gibb

Surrealism
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When the images are broken down into their language-based roots, something striking happens. The literal meaning jumps out with as much vitality as the striking colours, and the relationship between the image and the concept often carries through with steadfast continuity like in the painting Caught.

Caught, by Stephen Gibb, oil on panel, 36″ x 24″, 2018

While riffing on the theme “caught” and exploiting language and idioms of speech that utilize the word, such as “caught red-handed” Gibb has thematically tied together what otherwise would be construed as disparate, unrelated images. As one decodes the painting with this virtual key, idioms like “caught with your hand in the cookie jar” or “caught between the devil and deep blue sea” help to unify the subjects portrayed in the painting. The associations are sometimes very tenuous, forcing the viewer to contemplate the painting with more intensity. This demand on the viewer is what Gibb is hoping for—a concentrated effort, a slowed, deep thinking to resonate in parallel with the effort that went into making the painting.

“If the viewer can take themselves out of themselves, then I have done my job” says the Canadian painter. “I want people to slow down and immerse themselves in the painting—this isn’t some decorative punch line that you get at a glance. This is more like a short story, that demands you challenge yourself a bit and extract something for yourself.”

The implicit contract between the artist and the viewer has been strained by aloof art-for-art’s-sake posturing and ignored so often we sometimes forget that the artist is aware that someone is going to confront it and mine it for meaning. With Gibb’s more ambitious paintings, there is a treasure waiting to unearth.

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