ng has a memory. “That place we got chased by gangbangers,” he said, pointing to a wall of graffiti from his slideshow.
“At this place, I didn’t put any green in my painting. So the local gang was called Frogtown. You had to put green in everything, or someplace in the piece, or they’d get mad. And they chased us out of there with baseball bats,” Simkins said.
Greg ‘CRAOLA’ Simkins is an artist based in Los Angeles, who was recently a special guest juror for Baton Rouge Gallery’s Surreal Salon. A highly sought-after surrealist painter, his artwork has been featured in museums and galleries across the world. On Monday, Simkins gave a lecture at the University.
During the lecture, Simkins told students the story of his artistic passion and career. Inspired by cartoons and comic books, Simkins began drawing at the age of three.
“I would sit and draw all day, and I became extremely obsessed with it,” Simkins said during his lecture. “I just would draw cartoon characters and toys and stuff all day.”
The obsession stayed with him throughout his school years until his first year of high school, when he took an art class.
“In the art class, the teacher told me to not pursue art,” Simkins said. “We didn’t see eye to eye, and he said ‘you’re probably not going to be an artist.’”
After that confrontation, Simkins decided he was going to be a veterinarian and continue art as a hobby. However, that resolution did not last long. Around the age of 18, Simkins met “some kids who were doing graffiti,” and decided to join them. Graffiti fueled Simkins’ artistic passion for several years.
“It wasn’t always the prettiest thing, but it was kinda what energized us. It’s what got us all excited to paint,” Simkins said.
However, Simkins began to paint less and less graffiti during his college years. Instead, he was introduced to acrylic painting. For a time, Simkins struggled with painting on canvas.
“I used to hang out at a tattoo shop. The guys there were always like ‘You gotta do a canvas! Paint me a canvas!’ I would say ‘I don’t know, I’m really struggling with it.’ This one guy put money down on the table he gave me a hundred bucks. He was like ‘You’re gonna paint a canvas for me!’ So [that] was the first one,” Simkins said. “That was the first time it felt good to paint with acrylics.”
One day, Simkins opened his email at work to find he had offers from Gallery1988 and Upper Playground, Both galleries asked Simkins to “show for them.” Simkins’ art was used in a Gallery1988 group show called “I Am 8bit,” where he showed a piece titled “Pac-Man Hospice.”
After his piece in the I Am 8bit show, the gallery told Simkins they wanted to work with him on a full-time basis.
At first, Simkins rejected the idea of giving up his secure job and making a living off his paintings. However, Simkins eventually tested the waters of being a full-time painter.
“I was given a solo show at Gallery1988. And it was kinda the one that was gonna tell us what was going to happen,” Simkins said. “I painted forever for this show. It was either going to make or break me.”
Every piece from the solo show was purchased.
“I was so happy, and they were so thrilled. They’ve sold out every single show I’ve had there,” Simkins said. “I never thought it was gonna happen.”
Since then, Simkins has become a prominent name in pop culture and surrealist art. But he did not stop there. Instead of creating one piece after another for his shows, Simkins focused on creating a larger, overarching narrative in his paintings.
“I wanted to do a body of work that unifies and talks to each other,” said Simkins. “And so I think it was around this time, all the pieces started having a narrative and all connected in some sort of fashion. So from one show to the next, they’d talk to each other.”
Despite a successful career, there are words of advice Simkins wishes he could give to his younger self. If he could go back in time, Simkins said he would get serious fast about what he was obsessed with. Even though he enjoyed going to parties and hanging out with his friends, painting was still his favorite thing to do.
“And [partying] kinda stole a lot of years from me, I didn’t get serious until I stopped doing a lot of that stuff,” Simkins said. “Once I started giving in to my obsessions, which was making art, I started getting better at it.”