While pondering a fun house setting for a painting, I became aware that the whole reason for a fun house is to artificially induce fear in the patron. It became clear that fear or phobias would then become the central theme to the painting. Taking a smattering of common phobias and integrating them into my surreal art, here is the result:

“Fun House of Phobias” — Stephen Gibb, 36″ x 24″, oil on panel 2019

Meditation on how fear shapes our lives

Fear fills us with anxiety.
It makes us avoid situations and it can make us seek out situations.
It forces us to overpay for things we don’t need.
It urges us buy cheap knockoffs.
It suffocates us in our inadequacies.
It erodes our status and drives our aspirations.
It ruins relationships and drowns us in paranoia.
It stokes the fires of jealousy.
It keeps us guarded and incapable of contact.
It waits for us at night.
It hides at the bus stop, dark alley, and foreboding basement.
It lurks behind the strangers face.
It slinks in the shadows of the unknown.
It watches us as we sleep.
It shows us what is wrong with the world.
It crushes us with what we see in ourselves.
It contaminates every uncertainty.
It rationalizes our irrationality.
It confuses our affirmations.
It makes us doubt the truth.
It dumbs us down and puffs us up.
It lies out loud and inside our heads.
It guides our thoughts and haunts our dreams.
It disrupts the peace with blunt force.
It looms like a dark cloud above us.
It screams on the dark pier of surreal art.
It is chronic and unrelenting.
It removes our calm and unsettles the waters.
It hints at the onset of madness.
It overthrows the balance.
It leads us to the edge.
It threatens us with doom.
It grips us like the icy hands of death.

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Contemporary art has been hit hard by our inability to focus, meditate or even take five minutes alone with a painting.

With my painting Death of Contemplation, the title comes from my lament for a time before incessant distraction. When you could fall into a deep, thoughtful meditation and slowly mull over an idea until it blossomed into something wonderful. The tranquility and quietening of the mind was like being submerged in a peaceful lucid dream, relaxing and thrilling at the same time. As a contemporary artist and painter, I relish those moments.

Death of Contemplation, Stephen Gibb, 36″ x 24″, oil on panel, 2019

The content of the painting however takes on a more dark turn. Based on idioms of death the “characters” associations and literal depictions of phrases relating to death create a macabre jumble of imagery. Not exactly your typical contemporary art.

On the far left a microphone records no sound in its emblematic expression of dead air. Next to it a dead end sign grows fruit with some already dead on the vine. At the head of the coffin rests a dead eye, contextually out of place from its normal nautical setting, it echoes a death’s head expression with empty eye sockets and mouth agape. The severed hand holds the black 8s and Aces of the dead man’s hand. Above the dead jelly man Humpty Dumpty whips a dead horse, locked in a dead heat with a living horse. The death’s head door is as dead as the doornail hammered into it and below a pair of dead man’s shoes sits abandoned. The Dodo is not quite as dead as a dodo, but soon will be with the thirteen coils of the hangman’s noose ready for action. Behind the dodo is a spectre of the undead, looming in the darkness. In the sky a symbolic representation of Hypnos (personification of sleep) flies by the moon while mirrored on the opposite side is the Hypnos’ twin brother Thanatos, represented by the inverted torch symbol and the Greek personification of death. Last is the sickle mounted on the wall, which occasionally substitutes for the scythe—the weapon held by the Grim Reaper…Mr. Death himself.

InstagramDeviantArt

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Pictorial Puzzles for a Post-human Paleontologist, Stephen Gibb, 36″ x 24″, oil on panel, 2018

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Happy Surreal Peanut Butter

Happy Peanut Butter – Stephen Gibb, oil on panel, 2’x2′, 2016r

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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…

Canadian Pop Surrealism meets Pop Art
(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 Canadian pop surrealism but I’d begrudgingly prefer to tag it as existential editorial cartoon realism, bubblegum surrealism, pop art, and or pop surrealism just because it sounds more intelligent, pretentious and funny at the same time. The work holds
Make sure to look for Happy Surreal Peanut Butter, pop art peanut butter, pop surrealism peanut butter, pop art cookie, pop surrealism cookie, pop art popsicle, pop surrealism popsicle and all the other fun images found at . If you have ever seen a happy surreal peanut butter sandwich then you have been bestowed with infinite good fortune and should buy a lottery ticket immediately. If you happen to eat a happy surreal peanut butter sandwich then your good fortune will be shared with everyone you come in contact with. Make sure to wash it down with a nice cold glass of fresh chocolate milk. Meditate on your favourite Canadian pop surrealist painter and all will be well.

Happy Surreal Peanut Butter

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Pop Art Peanut Butter

Pop Art Popsicle

Pop Art Reese Peanut Butter Cup

Pop Art Happy Candy

Pop Art Happy Cookie

Pop Art Donut

Pop Art Dorito

Pop Art Happy Pie

Pop Art Dopamine

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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…

(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. Pop Surrealism meets Pop Art

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. pop art peanut butter, pop surrealism peanut butter, pop art cookie, pop surrealism cookie, pop art popsicle, pop surrealism popsicle,

Canadian Pop Surrealism meets Pop Art

Pop Surrealism meets Pop Art appeared first on Stephen Gibb.

Revenge of the sycophant scorned – 2016

But is it contemporary art?

Here we go round the prickly apple at 5 o’clock in the morning – Stephen Gibb, oil on panel, 2017

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 and muse on the complexities of human behaviour and the fuzzy stratospheres of philosophy. Now let’s hear from the artist himself…

When I discovered Hieronymus Bosch at age 11 I knew I was going to be an artist. Up until that point my idea of an artist was Norman Rockwell, so imagine my surprise.

The artwork that made an early impression on my tiny 1960s mind was Rat Fink and the gruesome “Hot Rod” characters popularized by Ed “Big Daddy” Roth. There was something both revolting and appealing about his creations that I can’t quite resolve in my mind.

I also had this inexplicable sort of fascination/repulsion with commercial icons like the lovable Aunt Jemima, the quirky Quaker Oats guy and the unsettling nursery rhyme illustrations of Humpty Dumpty, man-in-the-moon faces and any highly-rendered cartoon character displaying an extreme emotion.

Everyone is quick to lump me with surrealism and specifically with Salvador Dali but I think I have more to do with MAD magazine than with Sigmund Freud.

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.

It is often categorized as pop surrealism but I’d begrudgingly prefer to tag it as existential editorial cartoon realism or my tongue-in-cheek favourite “Bubblegum Surrealism”, just because they sound 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 like something real but couldn’t possibly 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, which ranges from contemptuous dismissal to enthusiastic exuberance. We are all wired differently.

The medium is the method, which is a faithful deployment of oil paint using 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.

When constructing a painting, I often let a core image or concept dictate subliminally as to how the composition manifests itself. Colours and characters are woven in a psychological loom and their ambiguity speaks both clearly and muted (with off-stage directions) to those who are willing to confront them head on. Nothing is written in stone, nothing is absolute except the thirst to explore ideas.

-dictated under duress, 2015 (forcibly amended December, 2016)

Death of Contemplation, Stephen Gibb, 36″ x 24″, oil on panel, 2019

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Contemporary art in Canada, Canadian surrealism, Canadian Pop Surrealism, Bubblegum Surrealism

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