pop surrealism peanut butter

Anyone who creates something remotely surreal owes a debt to Freud, for delineating the concept of the “unconscious” mind, Andre Bretton, for formalizing the surreal process into a movement and Salvador Dali for rising to the top as their darling poster boy.

It was Dali who captured in oil paint the highly rendered, dream-like imagery of the wandering mind into a form that was both disturbing and intoxicating. Dali spawned thousands of imitators, emulators and admirers, and love him or hate him, his influence today is undeniable. He may have borrowed from the godfather of the surreal, Hieronymus Bosch, but as one time card-carrying contemporary of Surrealism, he was the painter exemplar.

Persistence of Dali

I often hear comments from people that my work reminds them of Dali and I forgive them for being naïve but also understand that it’s just a convenient way to tag me. As a simple point of reference that helps them to share in some kind of “art” experience, I know I should be more tolerant. It used to make me insane but now I’ve become numb to it.

Dopamine

But really, why should I protest? People are making associations; connections, conclusions that may not be particularly original but at least they are exhibiting what essentially makes surrealism tick – the instinctive reflex for humans to seek meaning out of chaos. If this is how the “audience” makes sense of their perceptions, how does the artist encode their intentions?

There was a reason I mentioned Dali above because I am now going to use him and his ilk to demonstrate my thought process in explain how I came to paint the way I paint. Often asked, “Where do your ideas come from?” I can now attempt to expose some of that process in a few clumsy paragraphs.

When I first encountered the work of Bosch, Breughel, Dali, De Chirico, Man Ray, Ernst, Magritte and others, I felt an immediate connection. No one had to explain or guide me through the subtleties of what I experienced. It was like a puzzle that had no conclusion, but was fun to unravel. That unsettling sense of familiar and unfamiliar blended into one form, touching the matchstick to the fuse in my powder keg mind is what drew me to the surreal. Something dreamlike, something innocent and perverse, something lurking in the shadows whispering inaudible prompts to draw you in, spin you blindfolded and shove you back into the world.

The lovelorn and the cycle of lies

This is what art should be for me. Something that generates ideas, thoughts, and discussions and that just doesn’t pose as an answer. It should be embraced for the conceptual nudge it gives and not for some phantom truth that it strives for. It should be open-ended and mysterious, to open the floodgates of your reasoning and stir the colliding thoughts in a pot of egoless abandon. It should go with you once you leave it, and gnaw at your sleep. It should soak into your skin and enter your bloodstream. It should surprise you when it unexpectedly returns in your daily activity.

When confronted by surrealist art people are often hung up on meaning. “What does it mean?” is asked in haste and the question precedes the act of seeing. It also becomes the blind alley leading them away from self-discovery. To process without instruction is a liberty we should embrace. This is your chance to be creative with nothing more than a visual stimulus to get your cart moving. The elements of a surreal composition can set a tone and set you free to associate whatever idiosyncratic notions you may chance upon. There is no rulebook, map or schematic logic to follow. It’s up to you.

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Revenge of the sycophant scorned – 2016

While Canada may be best known for hockey, maple syrup and poutine it also has a rich history in the arts and literature as being a detached point of perspective from which to do profound field studies on the United States. As the nearest sibling to America, Canada has been infiltrated by its culture, invaded by its advertising, amused and confused by its politics and saturated by its media. Where better than to observe the crucible of western culture and watch it bubble over…?

The post Surreal Life appeared first on Stephen Gibb.

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Dopamine

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

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

Pictorial Puzzles for a Post-human Paleontologist

Keeping it Together, Walking on Eggshells” — Stephen Gibb, 36″ x 24″, oil on panel, 2019

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

Last Days Of the Plague — Stephen Gibb, 36″ x 24″, oil on panel, 2020

Frog Prince at the Gates of Decay, painting by Canadian surrealist Stephen Gibb, 48″ x 36″, oil on panel, 2017

The reluctant clown candidate held aloft by blind zealots

Software and Clockworks

Revenge of the sycophant scorned

Happy cookie

Cheesy Dorito

Happy Peanut Butter

Freaky Donut

Self-absorbed Popsicle

Reese Peanut Butter Cup

All I want’s to be left on a block of ice

Sympathy for the Rat King

Spinning plates

Keeping mum in the presence of a toxic personality

If I blow your mind, what will you do for me?

Frantic preservation of essence in the face of imminent contamination

One bad apple

Maniacal menace of the culture colossus on auto pilot

Laughing my fool head off

The cannibal bubblegum’s sugary lust of hidden truths

Chicken and the egg

The emperor’s new confection

Heavy thoughts

With the promise of chocolate Humpty gets duped by the clockwork carrot

Oh, Crap!

Dark side of the flaming moon

Mastery of the social graces and the maladroit tea party

Carl sleeps and dreams of being forever Jung

The thief exploits a temporary lapse in security

The sourdough dolly and her salivating solid-door ally choose either salad or surreal cereal as Sir Eel and Salvador Dali look on

Krampus in the box

Last of the carnivorous unicorns

Darkness falls on the whitebread world

Stephen Gibb Artist 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 comment 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 and funny at the same time. The work holds
a certain reverence and faithfulness to reality mimicry but leans away enough 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 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 MDF panels always adds an interesting luminous quality 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.
see stephengibb.com for more

Stephen Gibb Canadian Surrealism

Stephen Gibb Canadian Pop Surrealism

Stephen Gibb Canadian Pop Surrealism

The post Canadian Pop Surrealism by painter Stephen Gibb appeared first on Stephen Gibb.