KP Projects | 5/7-6/4 | Los Angeles, CA

Go Outside

Greg “Craola” Simkins goes outside for his new show at KP Projects in Los Angeles

Anime, Disney, graffiti, pop culture, Saturday morning cartoons, fantasy books, science fiction. Put it all in a blender and hit the purée button for a few seconds. The chunky slush that comes out is a close approximation to the work of Greg “Craola” Simkins, who has a new show opening May 7 at KP Projects in Los Angeles. Piper’s Pass, acrylic on canvas, 100 x 60"

“The new works are part of an ongoing collection I have been creating for the past 16 years,” says Simkins. “I am calling the show Go Outside as it connects to this collection of works that live in a world I created called The Outside. Having this sandbox to play in has allowed me to ground some of my outlandish characters and given them a purpose. Imagine Wonderland, Narnia, Middle Earth and Oz have all collided. That is a good picture of what The Outside is to me. There are rabbit holes, wells and various portals into and out of this world which allows such a variety of characters to interact, and lets me use my imagination to create whatever dreamscapes that are dancing in my head. At the same time, this is my first solo show in over three years and the idea of Go Outside feels appropriate after having been locked down and figuratively ‘in’ for so long—it feels like the freedom of going outside is a positive direction to head in.” The Knocking Bird, acrylic on canvas, 36 x 30"

Simkins notes that every show he does starts with a large central piece and Go Outside is no exception. “In this case, I was able to work with an amazing Australian collector, Ryan Shulman, and put together the piece Piper’s Pass. The idea was to create a scene based off of the Pied Piper of Hamelin. Much of my style is derived from fables and fairy tales and this idea sparked so many ideas,” Simkins says. “I wanted to ground it in The Outside, like I do all my work, and to do that, I needed eggs. The birds in my work are very important. I have described them as the descendants of dragons and given them gifts such as ushering people to and from The Outside. The procession taking place in Piper’s Pass is a group of my Starry Knights, unmasked and in their various forms, disguised as minstrels and courtiers and knights in order to carry the precious eggs of some of the missing birds across the perilous pass so they can hatch safely upon their safe delivery.”

Besides eggs and knights, there is a menagerie of fantasy creatures including piano crabs, citrus fish, accordion-playing raccoons, porcelain triceratops-whale hybrids, submarine eels and armored seahorses. The work has the feel of a wimmelbilderbuch, a Waldo-esque hidden-picture book, except in this universe, Waldo has been devoured by the first page. Greg “Craola” Simkins in his studio. Photo by Brent Broza.

“I definitely go into my work with a ‘shake off the rules’ vibe, well, for the most part, ” Simkins remarks. “Some rules are necessary as order does allow my chaotic mind to have some framework. Fantasy and storytelling have always been huge elements in my work, ever since I was a kid. I loved to read and feel like stories—especially the ones with good ‘Hero’s Journey’ themes and portals into dangerous fantastic worlds—always stuck with me. Once I got older and began doing graffiti, I was able to paint large murals out on the streets of Los Angeles and, yes, there were dragons and monsters and heroes interlaced with my letters. My love for graffiti always works its way into my paintings. I like to hide my graffiti name CRAOLA in many of my pieces, especially the larger, more complicated ones such as Piper’s Pass. It’s fun watching people go on the easter egg hunt of finding CRAOLA in the paintings at my opening receptions. Coming up with clever ways of putting my name in pieces, as well as the crews that I am in, can be directly seen in the piece Reunited. The idea came to me during the beginning of the lockdowns due to the coronavirus pandemic.
I changed the lettering to say ‘Craola’ instead of ‘Corona’ on the bottle of beer with the idea of being excited to be back in a world where backyard BBQs were a thing again and having a Corona and lime with friends was something to look forward to.”The Octopus Gardener, acrylic on canvas, 60 x 36"

In several other works, Simkins uses cartoon-like characters. One that appears regularly is a black-and-white figure with buttoned trousers and long ears. It resembles Oswald the Lucky rabbit, a Walt Disney creation that precedes Mickey Mouse. “I am definitely a product of Saturday morning cartoons—cartoons in general. Growing up in the late 1970s and being a child of the ’80s, I spent a lot of time consuming cartoons, from old Disney, to Hanna-Barbera and everything in between,” Simkins says. “In later years, the works of Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli have become hugely influential as well. I have embraced the cartoonish characters that have found themselves in my sketchbooks and feel it’s my duty to give them some life by placing them in The Outside. It seems like a perfect place for them! Now as far as rabbits go, they are some of the first creatures I ever drew. I even had a ton of them as pets when I was a kid. I have written about them as being mischievous ushers through rabbit-holes into adventures in other worlds. Oswald and the White Rabbit are great examples of the fun you can have with rabbits, but an early influence to my work that I would be remiss to not mention is Richard Adams’ Watership Down. The adventures of the rabbits and the trials they go through, even down to the introduction to the black rabbit of Inlé, have found their way into my work.”Reunited, acrylic on canvas, 60 x 36"Works in the show include The Knocking Bird, which has a fish-like depiction of the rabbit figure, and the magnificently composed work The Octopus Gardner, which blends a detailed octopus coiling and twirling around various floral elements. He gives credit for the work to a Danish collector who helped inspire the floral design. Is This Your Card, acrylic on canvas, 48 x 60"Simkins, who lives in Torrance, California, says that what ultimately drives his work is Joseph Campbell’s famous “Hero’s Journey” theme within storytelling. “That theme pushes me to create these vignettes and moments of parties of characters coming together to solve a common goal or go on a quest!” he says “In my most recent book, Draw 2 the Well, I let a bit of the story of The Outside out in the introduction. I believe my next and seventh book will be a pairing of the writings I have been jotting down and collecting over the years to go along with the paintings that inspired them. What I want to achieve is the expanding of the universe I have created and see where it may leak out of the paintings and into other mediums. Here’s to many more years of getting lost Outside.” —