Art There Is Something Bigger
Written by Daniel Brantley
In a surreal world, Greg Craola Simkins offers a message from our sponsor.
Growing up, Greg Craola Simkins always had a pencil in his hand, and his parents constantly encouraged him to express himself artistically. He also had lots of rabbits hanging around his childhood home. Since then, he has since discovered a way to use his background to his advantage. Instead of letting his parents’ prodding go to waste, Simkins worked his way into an art career, with rabbits frequently popping up as if to usher an unseen Alice back to Wonderland.
As he developed, Simkins advanced steadily from drawing in sketchbooks and on tabletops of butcher paper to spray painting blank walls and train cars to creating illustrations for clothing and video games to painting with acrylic paint. Each step along the way, Simkins has soaked up his medium, learning and developing his craft into something that cannot be ignored. Today, his hard work has paid off in dollars and cents, as his talents have been called upon by Disney, Mattel, Vans shoe company, and bands like the Gym Class Heroes.
What do his pieces say? How do they have such appeal? Good questions.
Tackling the latter is certainly an easier task. Being a surreal painter naturally lends itself to oddities, and Simkins takes full advantage of this. In other words, Simkins appeal comes in the strangeness of his work. Any of his pieces suffice for an example. In “Hatch,” a sheep with ram horns, bloodshot eyes, a centipede-esque bottom half, and a masquerade mask atop its head with a second set of eyes peering out holds an egg with one red-gloved hand, while the other hand gingerly pulls a butterfly from the mouth of an octopus resembling Stitch from Lilo and Stitch, the butterfly’s body doubling as the Stitch octopus’ tongue.
With his wacky subject matter, the question of meaning is complicated. Regardless of any individual’s interpretation, the question remains: what cohesion does Craola’s art have? What is he trying to say with his thinned-out characters, two-headed Disney classics, oddly constructed animals? Answer: Nothing is as it seems. There is something else to what is seen, touched, and smelled on a daily basis.
Making his sentiments more potent is Craola’s love of the Renaissance artists. Many of his pieces are so well constructed that—if it weren’t for the ridiculously long-necked elk with a bird perched on its three-foot-long, blue tongue, melting candle on the elk’s back, and surroundings of a partially eaten apple and handfuls of grapes and blackberries—viewers could be fooled into believing the work was indeed a product of the heralded artists found in art history textbooks. Echoes of the Renaissance, of a day that reveled in still life and accuracy, ring throughout Simkins’ work. To magnify the effect, Simkins does what art galleries are known for doing with masterpieces. He frames his pieces in ornate gold frames. And he does it all without being snooty, claiming his role as a father and husband are more important than his title of artist. Because while it would seem he has no other passion in the world other than his art, there is something bigger than Simkins’ art. A study of his work or life proves it.
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