Wednesday, 16 April 2008


Cottage, 2008 Acrylic on canvas. 95 x 80 cm

House, 2008 Acrylic on canvas. 80 x 75 cm


Lax Lane, 2008 Acrylic on canvas. 80 x 67 cm

Switch Back, 2008 Acrylic on canvas. 109 x 80 cm

Barrels, 2007 Acrylic on canvas. 80 x 73 cm

Carl Stimpson’s paintings serve as a satire on the mundane nature of everyday life. His acrylic paintings exploit a comic book aesthetic following in the tradition of pop artists like Roy Lichenstein but his interests lie in work that feeds popular culture (Edward Hopper for instance) as much as work that appropriates it.

In his most recent work Carl is borrowing from the ‘Herge’s Adventures of Tintin’ series. At points the images from these books are being directly lifted and manipulated through a change in the captions or the addition of a prop in the scene. At other times Stimpson simply uses their style to describe a contemporary object or situation. By utilising the clean line and bold colour of the comic book Carl Stimpson infers a wonder in the everyday or perhaps a playful comment on how often through a passage of time nothing really happens.

The work is attractive, thought provoking and humorous. Stimpson is able to command all these qualities in one clean stroke.

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