“Greg “Craola” Simkins” posted from: The Citrus Report | Art, Culture, News, Graffiti, Music, Street Art, Clothing, Politics, Reviews

An Outsiders Guide to The Outside
By j.frede

The first time I saw Greg Simkins work was at an exhibition in Los Angeles. My immediate thought was that I couldn’t believe he wasn’t showing in a gallery on the scale of the Gagosian or Regen Projects. While his work may be more likely related to the lowbrow art scene, I felt the skill level and fantastical content surpassed the most well known artists in that community. It seemed I was witnessing a rare gem that had yet to be introduced to the greater public.

To see Simkins’ work in person is a marvel, you are instantly drawn into his mysterious world that seems to combine a Naturalists sketchbook and Salvador Dali’s daydreams. The characters in Simkins’ world “The Outside” ambiguously fall between innocent and mystically dark. At first the content seems brooding or melancholy but the more time you spend in The Outside subtleties arise and the creatures and characters take on more of a feeling of being homesick as a child, and you realize that there is more at work than your initial viewing had revealed.

Greg Simkins newest work is being presented in a solo exhibition titled Inside The Outside at New York’s Joshua Liner Gallery.  The work on show was inspired by Simkins’ recent travels to Hawaii and according to the press release for the exhibit “The almost fantastical beauty and variety of Hawaii’s natural environment is concentrated into works like “A Branch in the Water,” an acrylic-on-canvas painting where jellyfish possess the anatomy of roses and hibiscus and perch in coexistence with iridescent-feathered birds and hybrid insects of the imagination.” When asked about the concept behind the new work Simpkins replied, “I wanted to bring creatures that would never meet each other together. All the wildlife and colors you see in the ocean perhaps in a coral reef will never interact with the butterflies and birds in a garden. These boundaries don’t exist in The Outside.”

Often the characters from The Outside feature billowing cloudscapes pouring from their heads revealing or possibly obscuring the thoughts of the subject. Others feature fractures exposing various textures that may or may not hold the secrets to those characters inner workings. Another reoccurring element to the characters is the presence of masks, ranging from oversized and foreign to subtle and relative, which creates a dialog about the dichotomy of our public selves vs. our private selves.

Posted By The Citrus Report