#0025 CARL STIMPSON - DON'T OVERTHINK IT, MAKE IT!

Welcome to The Creative Nowhere Land Podcast.

On this episode, we're joined by East London-based artist, painter, and printmaker Carl Stimpson.

Growing up in a small town, Carls' influences weren't the classic art from the big galleries because, well, it just wasn't easily accessible. His major art influences came from the stuff around him, the comic books, the cartoons, the magazines, and the advertising, all of which have helped define Carl's distinct style of work.

Despite battling terrible shyness, Carl's creative talents were recognised by his father. Who encouraged him to pursue a more creative life and go and study fine art at university, which set the wheels in motion to a life dedicated to creating.

In this episode, we discuss Carl's creative journey from perfecting his craft as a painter and a colourist, to overcoming the hurdles of being painfully shy and instead of talking, using his art as a means of communicating ideas and emotions to people.

We also talk about Carl's multiple solo shows, including a pretty crazy one in Russia, selling a painting to Noel Gallagher from Oasis, and how social media is actually great for building your network as an introvert.

We also talk about how, in the purest way possible, as long as Carl can create, it doesn't matter what it takes. 

It's all about creating!

Check out the links below to see Carl's work while you're listening to the podcast, of course!  Hope you enjoy this episode of The Creative Nowhere Land Podcast.

CARL STIMPSON WEBSITE: https://www.carlstimpson.com/

CARL STIMPSON INSTAGRAM:  https://www.instagram.com/carl.stimpson/

Transcript

Small-Town Influences, Big Pop Aesthetic

SPEAKER_03 0:01

Hello everyone and welcome to the Creative Noah Land Podcast. On this episode, we're joined by East London-based artist, painter, and printmaker Carl Stimson. Growing up in a small town, Carr's influences weren't the classic art from the big galleries because, well, it just wasn't easily accessible. His major art influences came from the stuff around him: the comic books, the cartoons, the magazines, and the advertising, all of which have helped define Carr's distinct style of work. Bravely bucking convention from the people around him, and despite battling terrible shyness, Carr's creative talents were recognized by his father, who encouraged him to pursue a more creative life and go and study fine art at university, which set the wheels in motion to a life dedicated to creating. In this episode, we discussed Carr's creative journey, from perfecting his craft as a painter and a colourist to overcoming the hurdles of being painfully shy, and instead of talking, using his art as a means of communicating ideas and emotions to people. We also talk about Carl's multiple solo shows, including a pretty crazy one in Russia, selling a painting to Noel Gallagher from Oasis, how social media is actually great for building your network as an introvert, and also about how, in the purest way possible, it doesn't matter what it takes, it's just all about Carl creating what he wants to create. Check out the links in the show notes to see Carl's work while you're listening to the podcast, of course. But for now, enough of me, let's get into it, okay, should we go for it? Yeah. I've got a theory, Carl. We're from the same small town, there's definitely not very much art in that small town. You've got a very distinct style that is based off print, magazine, comic work.

SPEAKER_01 2:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 2:13

Now, my first question, do you think that is something to do with the fact that our lovely little small town had very little art, so magazines and comic books were really your only artistic influence. Yeah. That'll put you on the spot. No, no at all. It makes sense. Is that something that you've thought about though?

SPEAKER_04 2:30

Weirdly, I've been thinking about my very early work recently because I've been doing a lot of collage. I was thinking the first collage I did was when I was like a toddler. Really? Maybe not a toddler. A bit later on, maybe.

SPEAKER_03 2:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 2:45

First creative menu. Old enough to have a pair of scissors in my hands. Well, I used to cut up my mum's magazines and cut the adverts out and just stick them in a sketchbook and just compile them.

SPEAKER_03 2:57

Oh, just to collect them, not necessarily to manipulate or add them to each other, or did that come afterwards?

SPEAKER_04 3:02

I think I was thinking about it too much, but they must have been in conjunction with other things.

SPEAKER_03 3:08

You were almost starting your scrapbook. We should say, we sat in your studio here in East London, and that scrapbook nature, there's stuff everywhere, Carl. There's there's shelves, there's characters, but collecting stuff, collecting ideas, that seems to be a signifying starting point. Seems that way, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 3:26

Like you were saying, I only just thought that recently. But going back to your theory, maybe all those influences, they didn't come from galleries then.

SPEAKER_03 3:37

No. Does that lead us nicely on to you giving us a bit of a brief overview on your style of work?

SPEAKER_04 3:45

Yeah. But it's always hard doing that, isn't it? But I'll have a good go. Well, I'm painter and printmaker, collage artist and street artist. You asked me to describe the style. Yeah. I appropriate imagery. I'm a colourist. That's always key.

SPEAKER_03 4:04

When you say colourist, what do you mean by that?

SPEAKER_04 4:07

It means I'm good at mixing colours.

SPEAKER_03 4:10

But what I guess my question with that is, I suppose not why does that matter, but why is that a good skill to have of mixing colours rather than just going, oh, I've got this perfect colour straight out of an acrylic tube.

SPEAKER_04 4:21

Because when I started appropriating comics exactly as they were and being very anal about it.

SPEAKER_03 4:30

In a sort of draftsman like, you were like, I want to copy this perfectly. Yeah, but bigger.

SPEAKER_04 4:36

I wanted the colour right and I taught myself how to look at a colour in a comic book and mix it in acrylic. So it mattered to me then, but it's a skill I've required and it's quite handy.

SPEAKER_03 4:50

Yeah, but I wonder why why then that was so important to you to really replicate in such mind because some people might go, Oh, there's a Lego yellow, shall we say? If you just get a yellow, couldn't you? Why does it have to be the exact?

SPEAKER_04 5:07

Don't know. Way my brain's wired, I suppose. Um obsessive, and I've always been obsessive. I was obsessive about playing at a young age. And I think that's the same as an adult.

SPEAKER_03 5:22

But obsessed with playing at a young age, that sounds standard. Most kids are obsessed with playing, but when you say playing, what does your playing look like? Because we discussed before that you were you've consistently made art since you were a kid, right? Yeah. Was there any long-term goal or was it just a pleasure thing? I just want to create.

SPEAKER_04 5:38

No long-term goal. I'm not that clever. You sell yourself too short there, Carl. Maybe. I've always just wanted to do it, so I got on with it. I always liked things to be if I was playing with toys, they'd always have to be the same scale.

SPEAKER_03 5:55

Do you think you I mean, I know as a creative myself, I've got elements of OCD and all sorts of things that things have to be in a certain way. Is that something that goes on in your world that meticulous detail is important?

SPEAKER_04 6:09

Yeah, I think so. I don't know if I've got that though. Probably have. Everyone's on the scale, aren't they?

SPEAKER_03 6:16

Like I've never been told. But I think with your work you can see that yeah, that meticulous replication of essentially pop culture images, isn't it, really? Is that how we describe your work? Really bold, colourful, yeah, clear lines, mixture of screen prints, street art, large format paintings, but always something that people of a certain age would recognise, shall we say? Whether that's Disney, Tintin, Donald Duck, Liechtenstein, any of those things that we're talking about.

SPEAKER_04 6:50

Yeah, and that's just stuff I'm into, really.

SPEAKER_03 6:53

And that's and that's were you always into comics and stuff from Yeah, and cartoons. And again, does that go back to the fact that small town, we're not exposed to the great masters of art? We're exposed to pop culture, we're exposed to print, we're exposed to magazines, we're exposed to cartoons. So how does that progress from just a joy of cartoons and print and OCD style emulation? I guess my question is was there a moment that you realised that you wanted to do art forever and that you wanted to create and that you wanted to maybe study it?

SPEAKER_04 7:32

When I first realized that you have to do something for the rest of your life, I wanted to be an animator. Okay. But then I soon realised that the tools you needed to be an animator weren't at my fingertips and meant I'd have to rely on other people to get my s stuff done. Yeah. And I just stuck to cutting bits of paper up and drawing and painting because I can do that myself, don't really rely on anyone else. But once I'd realised that, I don't know, did I think I'm gonna do this forever? I was just getting on with it.

Shyness, Solace, and Choosing Art

SPEAKER_03 8:09

But then at what at some point because you studied fine art at Bournemouth University, so at some point you must have gone, I'm making a decision to go and do this.

SPEAKER_04 8:16

Yeah, well, it was sort of I didn't do very well at school and I couldn't wait to leave because I was chronically shy and academically shit. So I was like, that's not doing me any favours, I need to get out of here. So uh first chance I got when I was 16, I was like, I'm not doing that anymore. Went to work with my dad for that summer and he was a plumber, and he said, I've taught you how to do this. I said, Yeah, and he said, Don't fucking do it the rest of your life. Oh really? And he's like, Don't spend your whole life on your knees doing this. And I was like, Okay, and he said, Go and do your art.

SPEAKER_03 8:56

I was gonna ask, you mentioned that you were chronically shy as a kid. Was art and creativity a solace for you to just go into yourself and go, I can escape all the pressures of trying to make friends and just me and my sketchbook. Yeah, it must have been. I don't want to deep psychoanalyse you, Carl, but I was just it was just a train of thought that I went. A lot of people take solace in creativity and they find something about themselves or a place where they can make sense, yeah. And I've never really thought about that, but probably. So this advice from your dad was pretty life-changing, really. Don't spend your life doing what I've done, where we look at our parents and go, Well, but you're my hero. Yeah, but he knew I was an artist already. Do you know what I mean? He knew I weren't a plumber, which is amazing because a lot of other parents would go, but no, don't go and be an artist, you'll starve. Yeah, I know.

SPEAKER_04 9:44

Looking back, it was till I was a grown-up, I was like, Oh, blame me. That was good advice, but also not heard of much. Normally, a plumber is you learn this, you do this, you earn, you pay your way, and then you retire, and that's it.

SPEAKER_03 10:00

Like that and I think that's a generational thing, isn't it? For say we're very much the same age, our parents' generation. Being an artist, being a creative, being a writer, being a poet, being anything like that. No, no, get a regular job, you do that on the side for fun. Yeah. So your dad telling you that was quite a brave move to tell his definitely, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 10:18

And my dad's always been like that. I was my from a family of manual workers. My mum had her concerns, but for some reason, dad was just like normal.

SPEAKER_03 10:32

I would I would have said in a lot of situations where I've spent the mum is usually the one going, no, darling, you can go and do this, and the dad's don't be silly, son, get yourself a proper job. That's it. Whereas the roles are reversed. Yeah. Did that give you confidence though, to go actually, yeah, I will go and pursue this art.

SPEAKER_04 10:48

Yeah, I just I I signed up for college and they were like, Yep, that'll have it.

SPEAKER_03 10:52

To do what, like an art foundation or something?

College, Confidence, and Finding Community

SPEAKER_04 10:55

Well, I wanted to do a national diploma in fine art, but I couldn't because my GCSEs were shit. Right. So you had to do a BTEC or something like that. I don't know.

SPEAKER_03 11:06

Yeah, it'd be a BTET, wouldn't it? Probably.

SPEAKER_01 11:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 11:08

These are all qualifications in the UK people, they're not necessarily that important. It was college, I mean, but once I went to college, I was like, fuck.

SPEAKER_04 11:17

Doors open, you're probably all these people, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 11:20

By people, like and did you really feel that you found this creative hub of people?

SPEAKER_04 11:26

Yeah, and everyone was on the same page. And I didn't have that in school, I was just like friction, didn't want to be there.

SPEAKER_03 11:35

Did that make it easier for you to get over your shyness because people are all into the same thing, they're all creative.

SPEAKER_01 11:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 11:41

Because I have got a theory, it's like we're all introvert until we find our group of people.

SPEAKER_01 11:46

Yeah, that's true, isn't it? Yeah, must have been.

SPEAKER_03 11:50

So, what were you doing on this course? Because obviously you've gone, you've done a bit of plumbing with your dad, you've not really enjoyed school, you've always created. But then you're on this course now and you go, I get to create. What were you doing? What were you making? What were you or was it a bit of everything just to get taste? The course was a bit of everything anyway. This gave you little sample pockets of all sorts of things, probably drawing, life drawing, it was painting, it was textiles, it was graphic design, it's all of the all of those things.

SPEAKER_04 12:20

And I was there early every day. Like with school, I didn't want to sit in front of a load of words going, you need to write these out as quick as you can.

SPEAKER_02 12:30

Remember them like a like a parrot.

SPEAKER_04 12:32

I was going there, it's I'm doing this today, I'm doing a drawing or I'm doing some sculpture, or I'm doing life drawing.

SPEAKER_03 12:40

I remember having that similar feeling when I did my foundation. This was just like every day you were going, Oh my god, yeah, I can be creative every day. Yeah, it's great, wouldn't it? Who knew?

unknown 12:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 12:50

So that must I mean I can see by your face, you've lit up instantly just talking about that. You found your people, you're able to be creative. Are you still playing a r with this style or are you just going, no, I'm just experimenting with everything to find that?

SPEAKER_04 13:04

I was already a painter before I went to college. Oh, I could in school looking in books and seeing pop art from the 60s, and I read that it was a painting, and I just wanted to do that. And it wasn't until later on that I saw that these things in books, all these paintings in books in real life. And I always think about that, uh I was trying to mimic those paintings in books, and in the book, when it's a thumbnail, tiny little picture, it looks perfect and immaculate. Yeah. It wasn't till I was in my twenties and I'd come to London and see an actual Liechtenstein, and it's like, oh, there's a pencil line there, or a smudge there on that one.

SPEAKER_03 13:53

Does that go back to your seeing things in print and magazine and everything? Everything's flat, everything colour smooth, everything's that, you don't see a brush stroke like you say, you don't see a pencil line. Yeah, it's quite a heavy.

SPEAKER_04 14:04

Yeah, yeah, definitely. And I up until I was screen printing, I've just been mimicking print with my brush for years and just got very good just through persistence of it.

SPEAKER_03 14:19

And and as you say, you even before you went and did your B take, this was you were already painting, and that was you were trying to emulate that.

SPEAKER_04 14:26

And well, I I couldn't afford acrylic paint, but they had powder paint at school and PVA, and some teacher must have taught told me that I can mix those together and I was painting with that. Then someone should have an acrylic paint at college, and I was like, ooh, this is nice, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 14:44

I mean, obviously powder paint to acrylic is a bit of a difference, but just for m me being not a painter, why was that a big difference? It's already mixed, ready to go, or just nicer to paint with when you're I'm not a painter, so I'm asking I'm asking what is difference.

SPEAKER_04 14:58

Because powder paint and PVA is a bit rough. If you don't mix it, it's maybe a bit gritty or yeah.

SPEAKER_03 15:05

Okay. Yeah. And it's much harder to get that smooth finish that you were looking for, I guess, if that's what you were trying to remember.

SPEAKER_04 15:11

But that's all I had to hand. I didn't know any different. It's like any job, if you learn with the shittiest tool, when you get the nice tool, it's not a problem.

SPEAKER_03 15:22

Oh I like that. That's a good one for our listeners to think. If what if you're starting out, learn the skill with the shit apparatus, and then you can hopefully get the better stuff. And when you do, it's just like ah. Was that when you went to do B Tech, you found all these different types of paint, the ways of working?

SPEAKER_01 15:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 15:39

So you already had it in your mind. And then you're doing a B Tech. If you're tasting all these things, textiles, graphic design, animation, fine art, life drawing, whatever. Why did you opt for fine art above to carry on this study, carry on this practice?

SPEAKER_04 15:57

Yeah, it was just that to carry on. I just wanted to paint all the time.

Fine Art, Pop Imagery, and Crits

SPEAKER_03 16:04

But I guess what I'm guessing at Carl, your style is very graphic. Yeah. It's got all those pop culture influences. So I could also see that you could probably quite easily go into something like a graphic design or something like that, but always it was always about painting.

SPEAKER_04 16:20

Yeah, because I realised that in graphic design there's other limitations put in the way by other people. Briefs and things like that rather than that. When I'm set at the canvas, I could do whatever the fuck I want. And it doesn't matter. And there's no briefs. I know now that even then I've set myself my own briefs, but not really knowing about it. But I didn't want to get basically I don't want to do what anyone else tells me to do when I'm doing my art. I'm doing what I'm saying.

SPEAKER_03 16:57

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. But from a fine art point of view, did you go to Bournemouth with the style that you've got now?

SPEAKER_04 17:04

Well, it's a long development from when I was a kid to when I'm doing it now. It's it's just progressed. I don't really think about it too much. Do you know what I mean? I didn't really to be honest with you, I didn't know what university was when I was at college. One of the tutors said you should go to university, and I was like, no one goes to university, not from where I'm from.

SPEAKER_03 17:30

And they were like, you need to go. And I was like, well. What was their reasoning, do you think, behind saying that you really need to go to university?

SPEAKER_04 17:38

It's probably the same reason that my dad made me, well didn't make me suggested that I should go to college instead of being on a building site all day. It's the same reason as that.

SPEAKER_03 17:49

So almost a sort sin the passion that you do have for creativity are all those things and on body. And like I said, I didn't really know what that meant. That's usually generally off a body of work, isn't it? You go and have an interview, you've got a body of work, and they go, Oh, we can see that creative side in you coming through progression.

SPEAKER_01 18:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 18:08

How did that feel, being? Was that a confidence booster knowing that you were off to uni when no one else in the I'm not gonna say the whole town?

SPEAKER_04 18:14

I again I was still shy, even though I'd done all these things that had helped me. But I was shitting myself to be honest. I was like, I don't didn't know what to expect. It's humans, innit?

SPEAKER_03 18:28

When we we don't know what's going on and we've got to go through change ourselves a bit, it's a bit scary.

SPEAKER_04 18:32

But once I was there, it was the same again from going to college from school. It was just like, oh I'm gonna spend all day painting.

SPEAKER_03 18:40

Which is for someone who wants to paint, that's the dream. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What do you think university gave you that perhaps the B Tech didn't? Was it here that you were starting to find some of your major influences? Was it here where you were starting to find some elements of the style that you've become saying synonymous? That sounds always a bit synonymous. That you have got a very distinct style, Carl, which obviously if everyone looks at your work, they'll see. But I guess what I'm looking for, mate, is that when people hear, oh, we did a fine art degree, everyone thinks, oh, it's expressive art movements and this, that, and the other. Whereas yours is very, very refined, it's all about the line, it's all about the smoothness, it's all about representation.

SPEAKER_01 19:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 19:24

I just look at your work and wonder how that came out of the in quote fine art.

SPEAKER_04 19:31

Well, I was at university I purchased my first tinting comic, and I hadn't I hadn't read it as a kid. Watched the cartoons and loved it, but never had the physical copy of the comic book.

SPEAKER_03 19:44

But you've been in obviously you've been into other comics and so you'd never seen a physical copy of the comic book. What made you? Was it a coincidence? Was it oh I just happened to pick a comic book up and go, I'm gonna buy that for my collection?

SPEAKER_04 19:59

I just come across one in the charity shop, the destination room. And I thought I'd buy that, need it, or look at the pictures.

SPEAKER_02 20:07

Yeah, classic, classic grave. I'm sure it's a very good story, but the pictures are what I'm interested in, really.

SPEAKER_04 20:12

And then I was like, oh, just copy one of those cells and make it bigger, and that was pretty much it. I knew what it was, but I'd never had one in my hand.

SPEAKER_03 20:20

What was it about, because it's we're gonna both probably butcher the pronunciation. Is it is it Herge? Herge who did the drawings? Depends where you're from, I suppose. But he was the illustrator, right? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. What was it about his illustrations that suddenly made you think, oh, I was drawn to this?

SPEAKER_04 20:37

It was really neat. Yeah, probably.

SPEAKER_03 20:40

But but I think that's all very interesting.

SPEAKER_04 20:42

They're quite if you get a good copy, because they differ, I know now, but there's not much misregistration in the reprint of them. They're very tight. I've come across some bad ones since, but the one that I had was a very good one.

SPEAKER_03 20:59

And it just all the colour was in the lines and Which sounds kind of obvious, doesn't it, for comic, but it does make a big difference, doesn't it?

SPEAKER_04 21:06

Yeah. And I don't know, I I love that now, things being misprinted. But I don't know, maybe at the time I was just like, oh, it's all nice and neat. I wanted to know what that was like, and as a painter I could do it as I did it, and learn what's going on that page by recreating it.

SPEAKER_03 21:27

I'm intrigued. What are your tutors saying to you at this point? Like when you're doing this sort of work, presumably fine art. Are you surrounded by the make some vogue stereotype about artists, which everyone's gonna hate? Like, you know, the Tarquin and Jemima throwing expressive paints all over the cameras and arguing it's such and such meaning. And you're doing this intricate, fine line, large-scale reproductions of essentially commercial work. So I'm just intrigued about what your tutors, what are they saying? Are they encouraging this? Are they going, oh, this is brilliant, Carl? Or are they going, that's not exactly the fine art that we were looking for, guy?

SPEAKER_04 22:07

No, they encouraged it. In art history, it wasn't the first time anyone was doing that sort of stuff. So they knew what was going on and what I was trying to do.

SPEAKER_03 22:16

Yeah, obviously those motifs of all sorts of culture, Warhol, Liechtenstein, all those things that we've spoken about, that pop art, that's the whole thing, isn't it? Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 22:25

Yeah. But what they were doing at university was just trying to get us to which I was bad at trying to talk about your work, which is sort of what I'm struggling at talking to you now. No, not at all.

SPEAKER_03 22:40

But I know I I was a bit the same, the critiques and all those things. Yeah, but why have you done that? Why have you done this?

SPEAKER_04 22:45

And it's like But at the time it was just like doing some paintings, but I can understand now why they did that, and it is good to know.

SPEAKER_03 22:55

Okay, I'm gonna put you on the spot here then, Carl. Yeah, okay. If you were in a crit now at university, what would you say about your work? Oh don't worry, there's no detentions, you're not gonna get marked down or anything. I'm just interested.

SPEAKER_04 23:07

I just think, but I don't know. I always come I've always come from it from a practical side, and it's always been like that. Yeah. Oh maybe it was my dad teaching me how to use tools, like do you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_03 23:21

I I knew get the thing done. Well, you actually said when we spoke on the phone, one of the things that I wrote down was do it, don't think it. It's one of the things you said. I don't even said that do it to just do it, don't think it's get on with it.

SPEAKER_04 23:35

Which I think is great because it's good you must do it yourself. Do a piece of work and then come back to it later on and look at it like any other person's looking at it. So you can see it through everyone else's eyes. But at the time of making it, if you sit down and work out what exactly you're gonna do on a spreadsheet, but it's gonna work, is it?

Family History, War Themes, Meaning

SPEAKER_03 23:59

Well, it takes the creative spark out. It's like, alright, at 232, I need to pay the rush stroke exactly at this time length. Yeah, that's not do you think that's a balance? Do you need a balance of it? Goes back to, I think. Did we talk about this? There's a famous, what would you call it, story aphorism, something like that, where two classes of pottery makers, one of told they've just got to make as many pots as they possibly can, yeah, and the other class are told they've got to make one final pot at the end of end of the year that's just some all singing or dancing, it's the bees' knees. It was always the people that just put the output out that did the best because they were making it, learning from mistakes, doing it rather than overanalysing it. Do it, don't think it.

SPEAKER_01 24:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 24:40

But I think that's quite even more pure, don't you? It's just I was just doing it.

SPEAKER_04 24:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 24:45

You've always just done it though, right?

SPEAKER_04 24:46

From your story, it's I've always done it, yeah. I've just got on with it. And then occasionally you you look back and critique it yourself, and right.

SPEAKER_03 24:55

Is this the hard bit now? Now I'm asking you questions about it. Some of the stuff maybe perhaps because you've just done it, you haven't thought about it. Now I'm asking you to think about it, I'm putting you on the spot a bit.

SPEAKER_04 25:04

No, because you always do think about it, but I always think one of the reasons why I'm a visual artist is because I'm not great at words. And I have over the years realised that it's just my way of communication, and I'm trying to say something. Do you know what that is though?

SPEAKER_03 25:24

No. No. Because there are elements that are in-I'm gonna prompt you because there are very interesting elements in your work, but elements missing, stripes out, bits that are left a little bit ambiguous.

SPEAKER_04 25:37

Yeah, I don't know, but the sort of the abstracted bits, I never really know what they're about. But the stuff that is what it looks like, I've realised I've a bit of I've I've had along my obsessions. One of them was World War II. Looking back through my work, although I I'm visually excited by some of the depictions of certain aspects of World War II, whenever I reproduce these pictures in paintings and collage different images together, it's always very anti-war and hinting at the facts that we're still the same human beings that we were in the 30s and 40s, and nothing's changed really. We're still monkeys with sticks killing each other. These world wars that happen aren't the end to it all. It's just the same old shit again and again. So that I've noticed there's a thread there.

SPEAKER_03 26:42

It's quite a dark thread for someone whose work I would scream is beautiful, bold, colourful.

SPEAKER_04 26:49

It's not always like that, but I think my grandfather was in the fifth tank regiment during World War II, and he he did all most of the European theatre. So he did he went into France in 39, then got pushed back out, and then went down to Egypt and fought up and down North Africa and then did Sicily, it Italy, and then went back round for D-Day and then went D-Day plus one. The tanks went in, and then went up to Hamburg.

SPEAKER_03 27:28

So heavy influencing.

SPEAKER_04 27:29

And he was always fighting. But I knew the bloke, do you know what I mean? He was my granddad, and the stories I've heard over the years since, and it's just like fucking hell. But then he met my grandmother, who was a German girl from a farm just north of Hamburg, and her life before then, she obviously grew up in the Third Reich. She was in the Hitler youth, because that's what you had to do. And I interviewed her when I was a teenager, and I was doing a project at college, and they both had a really shit time. Do you know what I mean? I think we can't even comprehend, can we?

SPEAKER_03 28:11

And we were sat so luxurious with mobile phones and deliver of food to our doors whenever we want, and all these things, and we just have no comprehension what our ancestors, our grandparents' generation, went through during those times. No rations, bombings, war, death, your and grandfather seeing all those different countries as a probably a 20-year-old man.

SPEAKER_04 28:33

And all his mates that he seen died, and then my grandmother she called them Hitlers. She never used the word Nazis. But she said after the family, her dad was against the regime, but her uncle was all for it. And she said it split the family up. People were missing. Uncle Ants went off to the Eastern Front and they took all the horses, took all the men off the farm, and then it got shit. But then she met my granddad and then it got better for a bit. But I think that's always I've tried to work out what like you said, you can't comprehend all that stuff. But I just think like it's not finished, is it? We're still doing all that crap. Even though we've been fortunate not to live through a war, there's still people living through wars and still having someone they don't know running the show and deciding you're gonna live in shit or your fucking parents are gonna die, or your kids are gonna die, or your brother's gonna have to go off and kill someone else's kids. It's still out then, though.

SPEAKER_03 29:43

I mean, and it can How do you think that's because we originally started with this conversation about how that's influenced your art? Yeah, I know. Sorry, I've got to. No, no, don't polish. I think it's a really interesting story, and I think it's important. I'm just wondering, how do you feel that has I mean, I'm looking here, obviously, we've got the female fighter pilot. Lady up there. There's obviously war references in that and things like that, but that's quite a big deep thing to have hang. Or was it more a case of holy shit? My grandparents went through so much. Maybe I should just try and live a life that I want to and be an artist. Yeah. Sorry, I feel like I'm putting words into your mouth.

SPEAKER_04 30:18

I'm just not knowing how that I did used to think that at university because I was because I'd be like, at my age, granddad was two years into a war, but he did that. So I could be at university. And uh there was a an element of guilt, I suppose. Wow. Because it's like, what am I doing? Like just painting pretty colours on a canvas. Yeah, moving paint around the canvas. But I suppose that's what happens, isn't it?

SPEAKER_03 30:46

And like you say, to honour your grandparents, surely that's what you should be doing. If that's what you're lucky enough to be able to do. Exactly. And they've facilitated a world where we can all, you know, realistically do what we want to do.

Post-Uni Reality and Early Sales

SPEAKER_04 30:59

Yeah. And then my dad, going back to what he said, he's just like, well, you should be doing that. You shouldn't be plugging pipes together.

SPEAKER_03 31:09

Yeah, fair enough. So you're developing this style, there's lots of influences at university. This war thing, was that is that something you've thought about more now, or is that something you were thinking about back then as well? Because we've come a lot, I mean, let's let's be honest, Carl, we're no spring chickens. It's a bit of a while since you're at university.

SPEAKER_01 31:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 31:28

I've always thought about it since I was a teenager when I was old enough to have grown up thoughts about such things.

SPEAKER_03 31:35

And it's interesting because I'm sat in your studio, I can see bags of toy soldiers and all sorts of things. There's bandits at 12 o'clock, commando toys, all these little things. There's lots of elements, but it's just, I don't know, it's just something just very interesting about that thought process. That's quite a deep thing to think about while looking at your work, which feels dare I say it, fun. Yeah. Yeah. Or is that the balance? Maybe. You've got all these dark thoughts about World War II, you've got to make beautiful, colourful, cartoony pop art to balance that out.

SPEAKER_04 32:46

Maybe that's what I'm doing. Because there is a lot of elements of the world as humans that that isn't great.

SPEAKER_03 32:56

Does your help you protect yourself a bit from that? Maybe, yeah. When you're in the studio, all that horrible stuff in the world.

SPEAKER_04 33:04

Probably.

SPEAKER_03 33:04

I get you.

SPEAKER_04 33:05

Yeah. And paint paint it pink.

SPEAKER_03 33:09

Yeah, yeah, why not? Why not? Okay. So would you say when you were at Bournemouth you'd you'd found your style? I'd say so. Yeah. Yeah. So what happens after Bournemouth? Obviously, you've done your fine art degree. I'm gonna come out of university and be the greatest fine artist known to man. What happens? Well, I realised I can't pay my bills like most people do. Did you stay in Bournemouth? Did you come back home? No. Because now you're in London. We need to get to how we got here. I went to back to Kidderminster. Did that feel like a step backwards after being in Bournemouth and being hugely creative?

SPEAKER_01 33:46

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 33:47

It was a bit of a common misconceptions that the friends back in the hometown were going, oh, he's an artist. Whatever.

SPEAKER_04 33:54

It was a calm down, yeah. And I was back in the same situation I was before I had full-time education to hold me up.

SPEAKER_03 34:06

Well, like you say, if you did four years at college and then a three year, presumably, that's a good seven years studying that you had your full creative juices flowing, and then you go, Oh. What happens to an artist in the real world, Carl? Goes back to working in a pub. Well, yeah. Pretty much.

SPEAKER_04 34:23

And my uncle was had a big project on to run an opt in with that. What was that doing? Just renovating a manual building. Yeah. So it's all heavy machinery, which was fun. And I'd like doing all that stuff. Again, it's making and creating in its own way. Making stuff with your hands, yeah. But then I had to think I'm gonna have to do this a lot more. But as long as I'm painting, I don't really care what I'm doing.

SPEAKER_03 34:52

And you still maintained your practice when you came back to Kitty, even though you were labouring, renovating, doing it. It's all just a means to an end to keep producing art.

SPEAKER_04 35:02

Pretty much. Obviously, the one thing that I did have as a shock was the time that I had before gone. So it was like you're only doing that in the evenings or the weekends, yeah, sort of thing.

London Move, Graft, and Imposter Fear

SPEAKER_03 35:17

Yeah, going from all day every day in creative spaces to being able to paint all day, all night if you wanted to, probably at university to go in. No, no. You've only got this brief window between eight and ten where you pass out because your body's knackered from working all day. Yeah. Has that been hard? Because I suppose we should say you're not a full-time artist, are you? You've always just it we're still in a similar situation. Even down in London, you work, you get jobs, you do bits to fund your art.

SPEAKER_04 35:43

It was only shocking then because I'd not known any different for three years, but then you get on with it, then you I knew that I'd I've never been had that much respect for money, but I realised that you do need it.

SPEAKER_03 35:59

Money buys you paint, money buys your canvas. And I do think that's a great mentality to have.

SPEAKER_01 36:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 36:04

It's about funding your creative passion, which shows clearly you're dedicated.

SPEAKER_01 36:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 36:11

But when I was at college, I got a job in at the Tap House, which we both know, in Kidderminster and Which is a pub for anyone listening to. Oh yeah, sorry, it's a pub. That did two things. Well, before I even worked there, I got friendly with Andy because I wore a Hoot t-shirt that I screen printed. And I got friends with him, and then because I was into all that muddy stuff, and I was into my music, I got friends with Andy and his crew.

SPEAKER_03 36:40

So Andy, for reference, is the guy that ran the pub. It was a very big music pub in our little town. Our town is actually quite famous for music, but yeah, it was a pub and there was as I say really good scene of different music, different bands coming through. So it was the place to be, wasn't it? Really? Yeah, it was yeah, it was so you became friends with him and he gave you a job. Now, my next question Well, did that help your confidence? Yes. Ah, okay. Being in that social environment where you're forced to interact with people. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 37:07

Do you want a drink, mate? Yeah, yeah. Exactly. I made friends with them, but my mate Kate asked me to ask Andy if she could have a job. And I told this my dad, and he's like, What the fuck are you doing? Go and ask for your own one. And I was like, I can't do that. He goes, Go and ask for one for yourself as well. So I went back to Andy and I said, Can I have a job as well, please? And he was like, And then Laura, Andy's mum, she was amazing, and she was just like, You're doing um this Friday. And I was like, Friday's around. And I was in it deep. Jump straight in the fire, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 37:42

And then sink or swim, isn't it? And those I think, and I and that's the best thing. Andy's dad was a merchant diver and all those things. So it was like there was no messing around with it. Like, if you can do it, you can do it. If not, if you can't do Friday, don't bother coming back.

SPEAKER_04 37:54

Exactly. And then and I loved it, and that shyness was beaten out of me.

SPEAKER_03 38:00

Like, you have to put yourself in those uncomfortable situations.

SPEAKER_04 38:03

Yeah, definitely. But also at the same time, just before I got a job there, I I said to the tappers, can I put one of my paintings up in your pub? And I was like, Yeah, of course you can. And I did that.

SPEAKER_03 38:14

And was that one of the first presumably you'd had ended end of year shows and things like that at university? But like your first independent, I'm doing this on my I'm gonna put some work out there for the world to see.

SPEAKER_04 38:24

Yeah, no, that was before you that was before. Oh, sorry, before that was even before you. That was my first year at college, like I was 17. Because I was drinking in there before I should have.

SPEAKER_02 38:34

So I had to wait until I was actually old enough to get a job in there. Yeah, I get your call.

SPEAKER_03 38:38

You've been drinking in here for a long time, God. It's my birthday today. Yeah, it's not gonna tell you every day I've come in here for the last year, yeah. But now 18, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 38:46

But at the same time, my confidence was being boosted by a three-deep bar for five hours two nights a week.

SPEAKER_05 38:54

Me probably shouting, Where's my pine records?

SPEAKER_04 38:57

I was showing my work and I also started selling it. So people are like, Can I buy that? Or who does the art in here? And I've put more up. And so at an early age, I was selling my stuff. Which thinking back to it, it was quite handy to know what that's like.

SPEAKER_03 39:15

That's great. So you constantly got a an outlet, your confidence is growing, which is like you say, must have sent you in slightly different levels, shall we say, when you're moving on through this social situation of art college, university. I've dealt with this, I've dealt with a bar that's five deep on a Friday night.

SPEAKER_04 39:33

Yeah. So all sorts of confidence from different aspects of life. But I don't know where I was going with that.

SPEAKER_03 39:41

I think we've we've jumped about a bit, haven't we? Because we're then talking about how you were selling prints before you were off at uni, and then when you came back to Kitty after uni, did you come back and was it just the renovations, or did you go back and work at the tap house, or did you I think I I signed on, then went for a drink at the tap house, and they were like, Why are you signing on?

SPEAKER_04 40:02

Just come back here and I was like, okay. And I think I tried to peddle my work round galleries, round Birmingham, and obviously had a handful of rejections.

SPEAKER_03 40:14

And also just to say, the Midlands, probably at that time it's still not great, but Birmingham, there's very few galleries, there's very few outlets for art. It's going back to what we said about our small town. I mean, yeah, we didn't have an art gallery in our town, we didn't have grand masters like Rubens and Caravaggio and coming from Kidderminster, unfortunately. So it's interesting that development and how that's influenced you moving forward with your style.

SPEAKER_01 40:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 40:42

I feel like we've got to jump from how you got from there to going, right, let's bite the bullet. Gotta go to the bright lights of London.

Screen Printing Breakthrough

SPEAKER_04 40:49

Well, I was working 12 hours days with my uncle, and then working several nights at the Taphouse. And then my mate, some of my mates from university were like, We're moving to London. Do you want to move in with us? And I was like, Oh yeah, I'm working my ass off, I'm getting some money together. And again, I was like, fuck, do I move to London? And I was like, I need to do that while I've got the chance, while I've got some mates to live with.

SPEAKER_03 41:18

And I'm gonna probably say something obvious. Is that the draw? There was bugger all going on back in the Midlands, and he thought I'd rather be in a bigger city, capital city, where art is at least you've got some galleries you can visit.

SPEAKER_04 41:30

Yeah, exactly. Because I didn't give it much time to sell my work wearing these galleries in Birmingham, but I was just like, is this it? And then I was like, Do you think it's a bravery for you to move to London? Yeah, again, I was shitting myself again. Like I was going to college or going to university or getting a job behind the bar, anything near we shit ourselves.

SPEAKER_03 41:52

It's like, oh god, this is terrifying. Don't you need that? I think, don't you? Like fear's healthy, it's a good driver.

SPEAKER_01 41:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 41:59

Take yourself out of your comfort zone. And as I say, the lessons you learn when you take yourself out of the comfort zone, like you working in the pub or whatever it might be.

SPEAKER_04 42:07

It's all it's all knowledge and experience, and it's so come on then.

SPEAKER_03 42:11

What does that look like when you move to London? Is it God? I'm selling with all the best galleries, I'm eating caveat, or is it shit? I feel like I'm squatting, trying to make my art, trying to find my way. Is it back to starving artists, but at least we're all doing it together?

SPEAKER_04 42:27

Yeah, it was pretty much the latter.

SPEAKER_03 42:30

Was that liberating? Was it fun? Were they other artists that you were? Yeah, it's my friends from university. So you all had the same goal, the same mission. You wanted to make your art your thing. I don't know if we all did. Did you? Yeah. Yeah. I know it sounds like an obvious question because I I'm talking to you now as Carl Simpson the artist, but like you say, it's not, it's just about doing it. Try not to overthink it. So actually asking the question, was that your intention? Oh, yeah, I'm gonna I'm gonna be an artist.

SPEAKER_04 42:58

Yeah. And I wanted to do what I'd always done and make my work, show it. That's all.

SPEAKER_03 43:04

Did it matter how you lived at that point?

SPEAKER_04 43:06

No, not at all. I I was in a room this size with a bed up on its ends, yeah, and it was my studio, and I didn't give a fuck. Great, as long as I'm painting, I don't care. That's it. And obviously, it was a bit daunting to go and get myself out there in London.

SPEAKER_03 43:25

But so go on, then how what does that look like? You're an artist living in your bedsit studio. What does it look like to start earning money from your art, putting yourself out there, going to galleries, talking to people?

SPEAKER_04 43:37

I wasn't earning my money from my art. I was on and off to the doll.

SPEAKER_03 43:42

But then I think that's that's part of the realistic story, isn't it? You know, it's not the easiest thing to make money from.

SPEAKER_04 43:47

My uncle was still doing his projects, so it I'd go back to the Midlands for a couple of weeks, earn some money, come back down to London and start making art again.

SPEAKER_03 43:57

Yeah. Okay, so what does it look like putting your work? What you said you're putting your work out there? You're painting, going to galleries, you're not printing as such as this.

SPEAKER_04 44:07

No, I was still just painting. It's all I'd do very little proprietary work. It'd be a sketch or a small painting, and then I'd just make it big. I did that for years. I always wanted to paint big paintings like my influences have always done. And making a living of selling big canvases for what they're worth as a nobody isn't the best way to earn money. Yeah. Because you can sell them for nothing, which I probably did a lot, but even then, it ain't a good way to earn a living. No. Unless you're in a gallery and I was shit scared of going to any galleries and going, This is my work.

SPEAKER_05 44:51

Can you say it, Bobby? Yeah. Well, of course.

SPEAKER_03 44:55

Mate, if you've listened to any of the podcasts, we all talk about imposter syndrome as creatives, as artists, as human beings, really. We all suffer from it. Putting yourself out there going, I do these paintings here, gallery. What do you think? It's going back to those crits again at university. I used to hate them. Yeah, it's horrible, isn't it? But you've built up a level of resilience in some ways. But I suppose all artists do, don't they? Like I don't know. Do all artists or do artists go, no, that I'm crippled by the fear? Oh god, talking about World War II. I mean, have you ever read The War on Art? No. I think Stephen Pressfield, and it's quite a famous text within art about the war on art. And I think the first line in that is something like it was far easier for Hitler to invade most of Western Europe than carry on his art career. Because he's a failed Austrian art student, essentially. Before anyone comes at me for saying, Oh, that's you belittled World War II. It's a true story. Yeah. Yeah. But not sure where that analogy came from. It's a World War II reference. I don't know. Yeah, it makes sense. Talk to me about the first time that a gallery said yes then.

Paste-Ups, COVID Courage, and Output

SPEAKER_04 46:00

Well, I realised that maybe going to galleries wasn't a good route. Why not? I don't know. I suppose it would have been good to get in one for financial reasons, but it's just maybe too many rejections, being a no-one, not having enough confidence in my work. All that together was like, I don't need that in my life. It's easier for me to work earn money other ways and get on with my artwork. Yeah. It's always been like that. Taking the stress of trying to earn money from your artwork, taking that out of the equation just lets you get on with it. Yeah. I don't want those things affecting my work. When I'm like I said before, when I'm in front of my a bit of paper or a canvas, I'm doing what I want to do, not what I think will earn me money or what someone else will want to do.

SPEAKER_03 46:57

There's a purity to that, right? In the sense that I'm creating out of pureness rather than to go, I need to sell this canvas for XYZ because I've got a gas bill, I've got rent, I've got this, I've got this.

SPEAKER_04 47:08

Yeah, and I've been guilty of that in the past. But then now I'm a printmaker doing it all the time, making one bit of art lots of times.

SPEAKER_03 47:17

And that's that's quite a poignant turnaround being down in London, isn't it? And it was about 2018 you found screen printing, which is a way of you to take those images that you've created on canvas and then mimic them, presumably with such a smoothness of finish, all those things that you're looking for from the print. Yeah. What was that like? Talk us a little bit about the process.

SPEAKER_04 47:40

How did you deliberately go looking to find screen printing or did someone offer you a workshop or well what happened was we I mean my girlfriend moves into a flat round the corner from Atom Gallery. Should we give Atom Gallery? Where's Atom Gallery? Atom Gallery is on Green Lane, Stoke Newton's London. Yeah. Well, we went into that gallery because it was around the corner from us. Got friendly with them, and Mark and Rich went, We like your work, but we don't sell big canvases and we don't sell digital prints of stuff, which was just what I was doing at the time. And they said if if you do some screen prints, we'll sell them. And they basically made me screen print.

SPEAKER_03 48:24

And you learned to screen print because they wanted to sell your work. Yeah. They saw you as a cash cow, really, didn't they, Carl? Like, oh, we can sell this work, let's get him in the print room. And Atom Gallery had a a print space there, right?

SPEAKER_04 48:36

Yeah, but I didn't know them well enough to use their facilities. Okay. But down the the road the other way was the print club in Dalston, which is like an open access print studio full of people printing, screen printing.

SPEAKER_03 48:51

And what you did a workshop, you learn went and learned to do it.

SPEAKER_04 48:54

Yeah, I did a couple of workshops with them. Did a beginner's one and an advanced one, and then they were like, you can use Yeah, similar.

SPEAKER_03 49:02

I I went and did a with Mark Wilkinson, one of the artists that was on season one. I did a screen printing workshop with him.

SPEAKER_04 49:08

Oh, with the place he's doing it, and boom, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 49:11

Absolutely loved it. It's so much fun, and the stuff you can do, and it's in my brain that I want to do something with my photographs and screen printing and stuff, but yeah, because it opens so many doors, doesn't it? Was that how it felt to you? It was massive. Because I suppose we should say at that point, you can then take your large-scale canvases, reproduce them in screen print form. But then also, is this the time that you started getting into doing more paste-ups and stuff? Because presumably with the screen printing, it's much easier to go boom, I'll do it on a slightly lighter white paper, go out and put that one a wall, see what happens.

SPEAKER_04 49:45

Yeah, because with screen printing, especially when you start it, you get a lot of wastage through cocking up stuff.

SPEAKER_03 49:52

Yeah, those misplaced screens and the misprints and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_04 49:57

And then just pulling through ink onto newsprint, keep doing them until it's nice, and then you do your put your nice paper in, and then but then you've got I had a rock of all these. Half. Well, that's great, apart from that spoiled little corner where ink splurged or whatever. On cheap paper that's subsequently I've found out that's quite easy to paste up onto a wall. How did you find that I did it? Well, no, I knew some artists, and they used to go out every Sunday. I was again too shy to go out, and I'd never done it before, and I was like, So, what was the turnaround bit that made you go? I didn't go. Oh, you didn't? And then when I was like, Oh, I probably should do this, COVID happened, which was fine because I just went out on my own and did it.

SPEAKER_03 50:46

Was that easier because you didn't have to deal with anyone else, or you didn't have to deal with shyness because you're just going, oh, it's just me.

SPEAKER_04 50:51

Yeah, and I should have got over this by now because I worked with artists, I was printing in a print studio full of printmakers. I've been at university painting next to every time I'd do that, it would be a struggle because I'm still shy. Do you know what I mean?

Process, Editions, and Momentum

SPEAKER_03 51:08

Where do you think that comes from, mate? It's not a psychology couch, but I'm just interested because, like you say, you've given yourself a lot of evidence to say I'm an artist, I can do this. But yeah, there's still that shyness, that fear. I don't know. I don't think it's a bad thing. I think it's actually quite endearing, mate. I find it very yeah, but I just I I'm just a bit interested because although it's hugely endearing, do you think you've limited yourself with some of the shyness? Do you think you've missed opportunities that you possibly could have taken? Yeah, countless. Really? Yeah. But you don't regret that, it's just we are where we're supposed to be, sort of. My main concern in life is getting work done. Yeah. Yeah, and I noticed that when and presumably when you start screen printing, your output goes up a huge amount.

SPEAKER_04 51:51

Yeah, because I was working full time, I was back up on the building site again, despite my dad telling me not to. But I was still producing work, painting, but obviously it takes a while when you're you've got a social life and it's just your weekends and evenings as a young person. You're still going out getting pissed, so there's you have to do uh make time for that. But I was doing it, I was making work regularly. That's difficult in itself, isn't it? Like you say, just to I don't I never found it difficult really, because I always wanted to do it and I needed to earn money. But when I started screen printing, I didn't know how to do layers, and I was just like, I know how to do it now. Yeah, but that's like at the time I was just like, I might as well stick to what I know and paint the colours on, and then I was doing some a lot of portraits of Motown girls. I was like, I I need to do an addition of 50 because that's what all these artists do, do additions of 50. And I was like, Well, I need to paint all the colour onto these 50 things. So I in the studio at home I worked out with a projector where the acetate that I'd use as a positive, I got the same image on a projector onto the paper where the paper would be. So it said exactly where it was.

SPEAKER_03 53:14

You've got your screen printed layer, you've light projected the other bits over it, and then you're painted with that.

SPEAKER_04 53:20

So it's all set up, my easel and my projector with the image on the right size to my paper, put a right angle on the board that I was painted on, so I could got a stack of 50 sheets of paper, but I've got my three or four colours with a brush in each, and then it was just like splashed it on where I needed it, and did that 50 times.

SPEAKER_03 53:42

So again, still that kind of meticulous process.

SPEAKER_04 53:45

Yeah, but fast. But fast. And I'd never painted like that because I had to do it quick. Yeah. Doing that and taking those abstract bits of work to the print club and then printing over it with my clear line image that I'd painted previously. So I'm putting a very graphic thing on top of an abstract painting. Doing all that, I was just like, fuck, I can do all sorts with this. And also, after a three-hour run, I've got 50 pieces of work, and also I was like, Oh, what if I do this colour or this colour? I've got five or five or six variations, and I've done all that in my spare time.

SPEAKER_03 54:30

And is this the one where Atom galleries went? Oh, we'll take them.

Atom Gallery and New Confidence

SPEAKER_04 54:33

Well, yeah, I went, I went to them and I was like, Here's what you told me to do. And they were like, Oh, that's good. We'll put them out for sale, which was really good of them.

SPEAKER_03 54:42

How was that on your confidence level?

SPEAKER_04 54:43

Help? Yeah, it's always nice. I'd been selling my work for ages. It wasn't that that was exciting, it was all the ideas that I was like, why have I been shying away from this for years? People had told me I should screen print for ages.

SPEAKER_03 54:59

Well, it seems like with the references of your work, the print, the magazine, the advertising, it it does, it seems like a bit of a no-brainer.

SPEAKER_01 55:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 55:07

But I didn't need it because I could paint it, and I'd spent all those years perfecting the perfect painting with my brush. I could paint whatever I saw in a comic book. But I realized that when I started printing, I was like, I don't need to do that anymore.

SPEAKER_03 55:25

Did you start thinking a little bit more? I know this is not the goal, but did you start thinking a little bit more commercially then as an artist, going, well, maybe I could sell these 50 prints and then I can then buy that, or I can then get some new screens done for the next screen print, or is it always just don't think it's because I'm I've got my job to pay for it all.

SPEAKER_04 55:44

At that time, I was just like, fuck, there's so much I can do, and I've never been this excited for for years about my artwork, and I can carry on working, and my output has gone up fucking 200%. Yeah, I can make a painting, I can make a print from it, then I can change what colours they are in a click of a finger relatively to what it would take to paint the difference from scratch, yeah. And at the same time, I was hanging around with artists, which was also of note because I hadn't done that since university. And a sense of community physically working next to artists is different from having mates that are artists that you see at the pub. When you're working together, that helps. And just seeing people working and talking, not of just about the physical processes of making stuff. I forgot how good that is for your practice.

SPEAKER_03 56:42

And I've again feel a bit like being back at uni in some respects.

SPEAKER_04 56:45

No, yeah, completely, because I hadn't been there. And in London, for financial reasons, I hadn't gone to a studio and paid for space. I'd always done it where I slept because it's expensive. But most of the things that I end up doing are to try and save money are secondary to wanting to get art made.

SPEAKER_03 57:05

It's just a means and to an end to facilitate you making your art.

SPEAKER_04 57:08

And it's all good, no matter what you do, going to work, even if it's not arty, still informs your art.

SPEAKER_03 57:16

Everything you consume as a human is all fuel contributing to the art belt or whatever ideas bank.

SPEAKER_04 57:26

There's a school of thought where sitting in a in a studio just painting and not experiencing anything else isn't really good for your art.

SPEAKER_03 57:36

You should be going out there and doing other shit that Yeah, varying your inputs, varying the stuff you're seeing, varying the colours you're looking at, varying the Yeah, just ideas, I think you all need all that helps. And did being in London help that and surrounded by other artists and all that we'll go full circle. We both grew up in small town. Yeah. Not much cultural influence there, but you've come to London and there's culture everywhere, there's different ethnicities, city, galleries, yeah, paintings, street art, endless.

SPEAKER_04 58:04

Yeah, it's all heightened senses because you are chucked in the middle of a load of people from everywhere in the world. There's a lot more things happening. I could get on my bike and go and see Wham by Liechtenstein hanging in a tate and it would take me 20 minutes. Yeah. That's very literal sort of artisaness, but yeah. All influences a informs your work, doesn't it? Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 58:32

Do you think do you think moving to London has changed or informed your work in any way that you can see? Did you notice a change in your work?

unknown 58:41

No.

SPEAKER_03 58:41

Apart from the practicalities of creating, making, it's not painting anymore, screen printing. I'm around artists, going to do more paste-ups. No.

SPEAKER_04 58:49

Not that I can think of, but it doesn't mean it didn't happen.

SPEAKER_03 58:53

No, of course. So you started pasting up in COVID. What does pasting up do? Is it I'm a naughty rebellious artist, or is it I want to get my work seen by people, I just want eyes on it?

SPEAKER_04 59:05

It goes back to what I was saying, I think, that the reason why I'm painting or making art or printing or anything, is because proven a point by not finding the words to say. It's my way of communicating with people. And there is a a thrill at doing street art because you're not allowed to do it, but it's not that's just an added bonus. I'm not doing it to be rebellious, I'm just doing it so I can tell another human this is what I do. Not even what I do. Well I'm trying to tell them something, and like we've discussed, I don't really know what that is. But my friend said once, what's the point of doing art if no one's ever gonna see it? And it's probably a good point, because that's what you're doing, right?

Why Street Work Matters

SPEAKER_03 59:57

You could you're conveying a an emotion or a idea or a idea you want to just like yeah, some so yeah, you so putting it on the streets set a sketchbook or a uh you know on a shelf for forever, but no one's gonna ever see that. You're not expressing it.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:12

Yeah, yeah. And although you do need to like to progress your artwork, you need to get on with it and do stuff and sometimes you seem to be quite good at that though.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:21

It's all about producing rather than meaning, thinking it, or I've gonna have some grandiose meaning behind all of this.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:29

Yeah, that's what I've always done. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:32

Do you think that's a better way for artists to work rather than to Overanalyse too much and get into the deep and meaningful is that just right for you?

SPEAKER_04 1:00:40

I do give that advice to people who ask me how to go about things because I'm not the one to come to to say to make a living from it because I don't do that and I'm don't really have much interest in it.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:53

But artwise getting on and doing it is Yeah, wasn't it Warhol that said something like it's not about I can't remember, is it something about not about making art?

SPEAKER_04 1:01:02

The quote was you make the art, I'm paraphrasing, it's not a direct quote. But he said get some art done and while everyone's trying to work out if it's good or not, you're making the next piece. So it's done. But I'm it's just not a concern in my case. I always quote Brian Eno for stuff because he's a clever bugger and he's an artist through and through. But he says that once a piece of art's been made, the thing that gives it value is the viewer's interpretation of it. I think he said something like that. It's not about you going, oh, this means this, and you should think this or feel this when you look at it. It's up to the whoever's looking at it.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:49

More art is interpretation of the viewer.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:52

Yeah, which makes sense, doesn't it, really? And I suppose the artworks that are famous, maybe a lot of people find value in it for certain things.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:05

Does the value come from the story that the art creates, maybe? I mean, it's I think what's the the Mona Lisa was only ever famous because isn't there some big story about how the Mona Lisa was stolen once or something like that? And it's actually not Da Vinci's probably one of his best, but it's got the best story or whatever. Yeah, there's lots of things like that make things famous.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:29

I'd like my art to be famous, that would be nice. I've not got no interest in me being famous. But also, I'm not making paintings to be famo I don't uh it disgusts me. Really? Maybe my shyness is stopping any of that. And maybe it does get in the way of stuff. But I think I've always been very fortunate when it comes to selling work and people appreciating it, that I'm into pop art and I'm making pop art, which is it's very nature, it's accessible to a lot of people, even if they think that they're not into art. I paint pictures of cars or things like that and it's bright colours. Lego.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:13

So they're do you think pop art is something that is it's not pop art's a terminology, isn't it? I almost think pop art these days, do you think it's almost a dying thing because the trends that happen so quickly or the brands that happen, they're here today, gone tomorrow. Whereas I'm looking at Lego boxes, you've done manipulations of the Disney, the Hanna Barbera, the Tom and Jerry's Motown, all sorts of these references. What will be those things of 30 years' time where someone goes, ah, do you remember 2020?

SPEAKER_04 1:03:46

I see what you're saying.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:47

But it's in the sense that I think culture moves so fast now these days with social media and all these things. A trend that was a trend or a brand that was a brand like Lego, we've grown up with Rubik's Cube, Disney, Tintin, even. Now it's just there's so much content. I wonder what the pop culture references will be. Obviously, there will be some.

SPEAKER_04 1:04:10

Yeah, I don't know. Anything and everything, isn't it? Me personally, I reference stuff that I'm interested in, and I I have I've been going through obsessions all my life, and they excite me visually, and I appropriate them and mess about with them, and that excites me as well.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:30

And that leads to things like a a solo show in Russia, doesn't it, Carl?

SPEAKER_04 1:04:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:34

Okay, so you've we've got to talk about this because solo show in Russia. Quite a big one. How did that come about? Social media. Okay, so how did social media lead you to have a solo show in Russia? Because I suppose now you've got quite a big social media following, but what was your social media following like back then? Not that big, really. So how did that warrant a solo show in Russia?

SPEAKER_04 1:05:01

I just got a message on Instagram. Fancy doing an exhibition. Just out of the blue. Really? Wow, that's quite cool. Yeah, it was it was interesting because I was just I said to Kerry, it was like another one of them jokers saying he's won the Ugandan lottery sort of thing. It's only gonna cost you a kidney, though. But I messaged Richard was from Birmingham, and he was the British consulate of the Urals at the time.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:32

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:33

So he was based in Yuketerinburg in Russia, which is Russia's second city, but right in the middle above Kazakhstan. And uh he was doing his job, and his way of going about it was connecting uh two countries. This was pre-invasion of Ukraine, so it wasn't as everyone's trying to be diplomatically friendly. Yeah, that fractious. So he was from Birmingham in Yeketerinburg, both second cities, both very industrial cities. So he was like, I'm gonna connect on that level and miss all the bureaucracy of Russia, London, and Moscow.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:15

And what? He knew you as a a Birmingham-based artist, or he knew you were from Birmingham?

SPEAKER_04 1:06:20

Yeah, because one of my blurbs just says I'm from Kiddie.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:23

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_04 1:06:24

So he must have just read it and then gone, ooh.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:27

In the first place, he must have been attracted to your work or found it somehow, or been following you, or yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:06:33

I think it was his wife that saw it and went, it's some work. And then she contacted me and then put me through to him. He was like, I'm coming back to do some Whitehall business if you want to meet up for a pint. And I was like, Kerry, make sure you can answer your phone, like just in case this is just in case I'm kidnapped. Yeah, yeah. And he was the nicest player he can meet. And he was with his mate, and we had a few pints. And he actually said to me, He's like, You might not realize this is a real thing, but he goes, It is, and there's no concern you need to have about it on actually giving you this opportunity.

Russia Solo Show: Setup and Shock

SPEAKER_03 1:07:08

When someone says you don't need to be concerned, I know you have to get a bit concerned, I think, right? So you were like, Kerry. Yeah, but he didn't know. So, what's the process like in that then? So he's gone, yeah. I want you to do this exhibition in what was the name of the place?

SPEAKER_04 1:07:20

Your Keterinberg.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:21

Like you presumably your first solo show. What does that look like? What do you have to do? Do you have to go and visit the space, or is it just wow, I've got to produce a whole series of new work?

SPEAKER_04 1:07:31

It was that I'd done I'd under my belt, I'd had a few exhibitions, solo exhibitions by then. So I knew the crack really.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:41

And what is the crack behind a solo exhibition? I know that's quite a broad question, but like if you could highlight something from the solo shows that you've done that you think our listeners would benefit from, what's the go-to bit of nugget advice?

SPEAKER_04 1:07:54

Don't imagine you're gonna earn any money from it.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:57

Really? Is it more like of a self-promotion thing?

SPEAKER_04 1:08:00

Yeah. Okay. It wasn't till recently I was earning money from an exhibition and I've done a lot of exhibitions.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:08

Everything from solo to group shows, sort of.

SPEAKER_04 1:08:10

Yeah, but it always because I wasn't mixing around with artists that much when I was in London, it'd always be myself doing it. Orbital comics had a gallery space, and I got friendly with them in town, they don't exist anymore. What was that, just a comic book shop that were in London? Yeah, in the middle of London. They gave me my first two solo exhibitions.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:33

It wouldn't really fit more perfectly, could it, man?

SPEAKER_04 1:08:35

No, I know, yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:37

And what those first couple, that was all about just getting your name out there, doing the show, putting the process together. Yeah, it was just Did you enjoy it? Yeah, I loved it. How was your confidence? Presumably doing like an opening night and hi everyone, I'm the artist. Yeah. Is that weird? Yeah, a bit, but there's boost to that helps with that. Yeah, boost. To take me back to the so you've done a few solo shows. You don't expect people to make any money from the solo shows to begin with. So, what's a solo show in Russia like then, compared to the things you've already done?

SPEAKER_04 1:09:09

It was completely different. And Richard had told them all that some famous artist from England was coming, and they didn't know any different. So I was just some novelty English artist. And they don't know I was no one.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:26

Was that a good thing or a bad thing? What it was an interesting learning curve, social learning curve. Were people treating you differently because they thought perhaps you were yeah, I don't want to say this, but like a higher level artist than you are. I think we're all artists in our own right, but yeah. But it what it taught me was that it's all bullshit. It's all about the story you tell, right? It's the Michael, it's like the Mona Lisa. Rich was like, this is the big artist in slash bread, everyone in England loves him. Yeah, okay, great. We'll buy into that. They didn't give a fuck if no one's heard of me in the UK. They they don't know. But how did that work? Did that amount to any sales of the Russian thing? No, nothing. You sold nothing, really? No, but people just like to be there drinking I drank champagne with a famous English artist, you know.

SPEAKER_04 1:10:15

Yeah, it was the biggest private view I've probably ever. There was hundreds of people there, like really it was around the whole week was mental. When I'd done all the work, which I had enough time to going back to it, Richard said, You're doing these portraits of all your soul heroines. Can you do some that are British and a few that are Russian portraits? Such as give me some examples of uh he said they really like the Beatles, so you're gonna have to do them and whoever you want. And I was like, I'm really into music, so I'll do Paul Weller and Terry Hall. They all like to be British. So did Amy Wynehouse Gallagher's one didn't get yeah, because Richard was into Oasis and he said, Can you do a portrait in Noel, please?

SPEAKER_03 1:11:01

Turn them back out now.

SPEAKER_04 1:11:02

I sold the painting to Noel Gallagher. Really?

unknown 1:11:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:06

So you've had a Russian exhibition and you've sold a painting to Noel Gallagher, and you're there being all shy and going, Oh, you know, I'm not really bothered about this. Okay, but that's another story. Yeah, which is another story we can go down.

SPEAKER_04 1:11:18

So he said the exhibition's gonna be like November of 2019. The space is massive, and it's gonna be at the Boris Yeltsin Centre, which is like an art gallery and a museum for Yeltsin. And he showed me, I was like, fucking hell. How big was it? It was massive, like a football picture. Yeah, it was and it went round in a circle. I can't I can't even tell you how big it was, it was massive. But because I was printing, I was like, well, I can do a black and white portrait, then I can do a coloured version. I'm doing these fictitious graffiti paintings, I can do a couple of them from local stuff that I find in Russia and put portraits on buildings so it'll connect it because I wanted to be connected to the Yeterinberg, and I was like, that's great, yeah. And so I did some of them. Um it had to be music related because every year they had a UK Russian year of so and so, and that year it was music, so that's why he was doing asking me to paint portraits of musicians, and it was fine because I that's what I was doing at the time, and I was just painting old British artists that I like, and some Russian ones I didn't have a clue about. Yeah, for sure. We ended up meeting up a few of them, it was interesting, but yeah, and I was working full-time. What I used to do, even when I wasn't doing an exhibition, I'd a print club. You can book the session, which is a three-hour session, but if you book at like midnight till eight in the morning, you can have that as one session. My main week would be work during the week, paint in the evenings, then on a Saturday night, take everything to print club and just print all night.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:04

Wow.

SPEAKER_04 1:13:04

And then feel a bit weird on the on the Sunday. Yeah, and I'd be like, face down. And a lot of the regulars would come in and I'd just be like, Yeah, like tired but wired in the morning. And then it's like at eight o'clock, people would be coming in, and I'd be like, I can't communicate with these people. And they must have thought I was right weirdo, like, but yeah, that's what I'd do generally, but and that's what I was doing with a massive deadline of a Russian exhibition where you put a koff caviar and vodka with the Russian dignitaries, yeah, and it was the same stuff, but bit more um, what's the word? Urgency, a lot more urgency involved. And I was working away a lot at the time, so I didn't have my weeks, so I was fitting floors.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:49

Suddenly time disappears, and you go, shit, I've got to print how many?

SPEAKER_04 1:13:53

So I I was cramming all my art. I couldn't do anything when I was away, working away in the evenings.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:59

Do you think that do you think that pressure was a good thing in some respects? Putting those constraints on you to go, I've got to get this done by then.

SPEAKER_04 1:14:05

Yeah, deadlines always help.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:14:08

Don't they? You know that. Like but then I really had to think. I asked my boss if I could have a couple of weeks off. A week before the exhibition and a week going out there. So it's all quite in 2019's quite intense, work-wise. And I managed to get them all. And it was funny, I we met up again when he was doing another Richard was doing another Whitehall visit. And I'd got all this exhibition into five big tubes. So all the pieces were B2, so they were 70 by 50. So I just kept it simple so they could transported say yeah. So they all went into five big tubes, and they went into a big suitcase, and then I took them into town to a pub in So or wherever it was. Sounds so dodgy.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:56

Oh no, I'm wearing the red carnation, I'll meet you with the suitcase full of paintings. Yeah, it was like a spy novel.

SPEAKER_04 1:15:03

It was, and it got even more like that when we were out there. It was amazing. But yeah, I would give him the big suitcase, and I was like, There you go, I trust you. And then a few weeks later, he was we were going out there, and I was like, Can Carrie come? And they were like, Yeah, and we went out.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:19

It was just a really intense week of like cultural differences, yeah, all sorts of craziness, you having your solo show in Russia, them thinking you're some infra frame was hard. Yeah, okay. Did that do wonders for your confidence though? Did you just come back or was it all a bit like whoa, whirlwind?

SPEAKER_04 1:15:38

It was a whirlwind, and I was like, what the fuck just happened then?

SPEAKER_03 1:15:42

But again, all these things must add to your confidence levels, add to the yeah.

Press Pits, Cultural Whirlwind

SPEAKER_04 1:15:47

Well, because Richard was like, We're gonna make use of you while you're here, we're gonna do a press conference tomorrow. And I was like, What? And he's like, didn't I say? And I was like, What, like a proper press conference? He goes, Yeah, yeah, Russia One are gonna be there, few other TV people and loads of them journalists. And I was like, Are you fucking joking? Because I don't want to do that. How is your confidence going into that? Again, I was just like, shit about it. Yeah, I was like, I can't do that, and I've never been so anxious, yeah, but you did it. And there was a very nice lady who was an interpreter, and she was lovely, really calm in, and she was just like, she really someone in your corner going, yeah. Yeah, and Kerry was there, and Richard was there, and they were like, I'm gonna be next to you, and the interpreter would be sat next to you, and then we got in there, and it was just like a big press pit of Yeah, oh my god, and I was like, Fuck, but you did it, Carl.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:46

Well, I didn't have a try, but just go no again. It's that you by doing something like that, you if you ever had to do it again, you call back on that memory. Yeah, I did it for Russia one and a press pit in the middle of Russia where I didn't even speak the language, so that's true, but yeah, and right, yeah, uh yeah, yeah, it was good. What was the major benefit? Did you you say you didn't sell anything? Was there more eyes on your work, uh social media influx, uh plutonium deposits whenever you want them?

SPEAKER_04 1:17:14

No, nothing that exotic. Just the main thing me and Kerry got from being in that place. We had one day we could go out on our own and everyone we met was lovely. But I think that was to do with because no one's ever heard of it. And they were like, Oh, you're British. Why have you come here? They just loved that we were there because you're a novelty essentially.

SPEAKER_03 1:17:36

Yeah, because everyone goes if they go to Russia, they go to Moscow, then go to St. Petersburg. What was it called?

SPEAKER_04 1:17:41

Yuketerimburg. And it's their second city, it's a second one. No, and they know that as well. It's a nerd shuffled. And it's a big, very brutal, dirty city. Yeah. And no one goes there. It's not St. Petersburg, it hasn't got fancy buildings with gold on the top. It's loads of brutal blocks and factories. And I bury them in them. Yeah, and you can see what Richard was doing. Connecting them in that way. But yeah, that they were lovely. And it was my first time leaving Europe, because it's just inside Asia. I mean, it was very European, more than I thought it would be. But it was just nice to see somewhere further afield.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:26

Yeah, and that goes back to those inputs, doesn't it? Yeah. Those inputs, those references, you've seen something different. Okay, we've got to jump back then. Sort of painting to Nogale. Please tell that story.

SPEAKER_04 1:18:36

Oh yeah. How did that happen? Well, it's not a really long story, really. But I was doing some construction work for the union in SOO, which is a members' club. And I was working next door renovating the expansion into the next building, basically. And I just said, Can I have an exhibition here or a solo show? And they were like, Yeah, that's fine.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:58

That's quite ballsy for a construction work to turn around and go, Oh, any chance of having an exhibition here? What?

SPEAKER_04 1:19:03

You make art? Yeah, there it was that, but I was friendly with them all. I'd been working with them for a while.

SPEAKER_03 1:19:09

And you take opportunities then, because it seems like you know, but there's an opportunity here, opportunity there. Yeah, could get kidnapped by Russian diplomats, but I'm gonna take that opportunity as well. I suppose so, but it's all my artwork. So then what happens? Noel comes, he's a member of the club, is he, or someone else?

Noel Gallagher Buys a Painting

SPEAKER_04 1:19:27

No, someone he knew. And I'd done one of my paintings was it was when I be pre-printing, and it was some German soldiers from a commando comic mashed together with a big cockerel from a Turkish stock cube that I found that was quite nice. So one of these soldiers is pointing at the a massive cockerel on the horizon. Cool. Poking out. And then it at the time I was taking a lot of lyrics from songs and putting them into the paintings, but appropriating the text from British translation tinting so it was meticulously making it look like it was just from Tintin thing, but it was saying the one in question was master plan lyrics, so it said because everything that's been is passed the answers in the looking glass, and that's was coming from one of these soldiers. And it was in that exhibition.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:31

Oh, that's good. The reference to us in that context, the reference to continuation of cyclical cycle of war. Yeah, exactly. Continuing to do the same thing they've always done, like you said earlier.

SPEAKER_04 1:20:40

Yeah. And looking back at it, the cockerel is just what's the word? Observe absurdist.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:49

Oh, it's a yeah, I see.

SPEAKER_04 1:20:51

The cockerel's that's absurd thing in a in a a landscape, but I'm doing that thing there like I'm in a crit, but I'm looking back at that, and it I wasn't really thinking at the time. I just but it all comes through, and there's third reich soldiers, and the third reich's is an absurd thing, and the song's called Master Plan that has a lot of connotations.

SPEAKER_03 1:21:14

Yeah, does that lead us nicely on, Carl, to your involvement not in the Third Reich, but in the Third Reich? I feel like we've done a nice segue. Yeah, I suppose. Can you tell us a little bit about for people that don't know the third reich isn't your project, is it? But it's you know you've been a helping force within this project. Can you tell us a little bit about because people are probably going, the third reich? What on earth are they talking about? But a lot of people would have seen this, I'm sure. Yeah, probably.

SPEAKER_04 1:21:40

It's my mate Blam of Grow Up Fame.

SPEAKER_03 1:21:43

The Tandal Grow Up Art.

SPEAKER_04 1:21:45

Yeah, grow up art on Instagram. We become friends just through art and obviously have the same political persuasions and don't like certain things that happen in humanity. He was just dicking around with ideas and at the same time the political climate in the US particularly, and the UK and most of Western Europe, yeah. Yeah, Middle East, pick them all. There's always bother going on. But it was notably heightened at the time as it is still now. And Blam was just dicking around with images, and he was like, What do you think of that, Carl? And I was like, it's fucking amazing.

SPEAKER_03 1:22:28

And because this is obviously a listening-based podcast, can you explain what the images he was creating were and why the Terd Reich is so It was Phil Jupitus because Blam was talking to it, and then he said, I should call it the Turd Reich.

SPEAKER_04 1:22:42

No right? But Phil said that's age old. He goes, he didn't come up with it. It's always been around. Okay.

SPEAKER_03 1:22:49

And how did this how did the Terd Reich manifest? That's what I'm getting at, Carl. How did Grow Up Art manifest this into a visual project?

SPEAKER_04 1:22:56

I need to stress that it's not my work and I've had no input into the creation of it. It all it was all very natural. A few weeks before I met up with Blam, I met up with Savant, who was another paste-up artist prominent around Brick Lane, and we just got on, and then he was just like, Do you want to help us next week? Put these up, and we're like, Yeah, fucking hell, yeah, of course.

SPEAKER_03 1:23:21

So come on, Carl, tell us what you were putting up.

SPEAKER_04 1:23:23

Blam did some very overtly political graphic design where he was taking photographs from 30s and 40s German uniforms and replacing the heads with basically rich white men that are running show at the minute. Originally, it was Trump Farage, Trump's right-hand man was his.

SPEAKER_03 1:23:48

Oh, JD Vance. Vance, that's it. So Vance, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Nigel Farage. And the Plonka in Israel. Oh, Netanyahu.

SPEAKER_04 1:23:58

Netanyahu.

SPEAKER_03 1:23:59

So yeah, quite a divisive group of people, shall we just say, for anyone who's listening that might be on a slightly different political persuasion. A real statement piece by him then.

SPEAKER_04 1:24:08

Yeah, it's very strong, and obviously it doesn't take much to work out what he's trying to say. So you went and helped him. But it was just natural. You just went for a pint and then just went out on Brick Lane at one o'clock on a Sunday afternoon, did those portraits, and instantly me and Sav would look round, and there was a crowd of people with phones, and it's like fucking hell. For someone that's shy, how did that feel?

SPEAKER_03 1:24:36

I wanted to get it done and go, which was what we did, but by then conversation, he's presumably Grow Apart's probably got his social media tags on it. You yeah, and I know it wasn't your project, but that's had a knock-on effect from you just being involved, right?

SPEAKER_04 1:24:52

Like in terms of your social media presence, that's gone wild in the last yeah, and it was only two posts went one particularly.

SPEAKER_03 1:25:00

But then the your following went up massively. Now, okay, the the turdright project decide. How did that change anything for you? Because as creatives and people in the modern world, we all think, oh, he's got thousands of Instagram followers, he must be selling loads of work. Has it made any difference whatsoever? No, I didn't think it would have really, but I'm just I want the listeners to understand that it's not all about following, like we discussed earlier.

SPEAKER_04 1:25:26

Not that's ever been a main concern of mine. No, obviously not. It's just a platform to show your work like anything else.

SPEAKER_03 1:25:36

But a lot of people would be under the impression, impression that oh wow, his social media's gone through the roof. He's got 15, 20, 30,000 followers or whatever you've got.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:45

Yeah.

The Turd Reich Collab Support

SPEAKER_03 1:25:46

Oh man, he must be just people logging on every day to his shop and buying stuff, and he must be sat there thinking, great, I'm just dishing out prints and da-da-da, this, that. It's not work like that though, does it? No, not at all. But again, this is what I want to get through to our listeners that it's you could have a hundred thousand followers, but you might not be selling work. Yeah, because most people are just watchers. Yeah, it didn't work like that. No. Do you feel like social media's help you with your work though, or do you think it's more of a hindrance?

SPEAKER_04 1:26:12

Up until that Russian exhibition, because when I met Kerry, which I must point out that she's been a massive influence on my work and helped me. She helps me in lots of ways, but what do you think the biggest way she helps you?

SPEAKER_03 1:26:25

Just having someone in your corner? Yeah, that helps.

SPEAKER_04 1:26:28

It sounds like she's quite practical as well. Yeah, very. And she's an artist as well. I bounce ideas off her all the time. She proofreads everything I do because I'm quite dyslexic and I make mistakes all the time. That helps. Across the board, she helps me in all sorts of ways. But in particular this time, when I met her, I had an old Nokia when everyone had a smartphone. And she was like, Get one of these, Carl. You can do an Instagram look and put your pictures on. And I was like, okay, I'll do that. And I was always like, Do I need to be doing this? Until someone went, Oh, I've seen you pictures. Do you want an exhibition in Russia?

SPEAKER_02 1:27:08

Yeah, suddenly it very much.

SPEAKER_04 1:27:09

And then it's like, oh, okay. So maybe I do need to do that. Being very shy, my idea of hell is going to a private view where there's lots of people talking. It's not my idea of fun. And I understand that if someone wants to make a living making art, you have to go and talk to people. Even though I'm more confident than I was when I was a teenager, I'm still really shy, and I don't want to do that.

SPEAKER_03 1:27:41

But going on social media, you don't have to talk to people, you can just show people.

SPEAKER_04 1:27:46

I I've have a network of people and I know their work, they know my work, and I've been following people for years and then meet up with them. I already know them because I know their work.

SPEAKER_03 1:27:59

Do you know any collaborations?

SPEAKER_04 1:28:01

Yeah, loads. And that's mostly all through Instagram. And it's meant that I can talk to other artists, like I did with Blam. And you don't need to do it all in one go when we're all at an exhibition where lots of people know each other, and you're going, Oh fuck, I don't want to tell you. Oh, they're talking to that person, I won't interrupt them.

SPEAKER_03 1:28:21

Yeah, it's like a little GM on a message going, Hi mate, fancy meeting up for a coffee or yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:28:27

And then when you do meet up, it's just you and them, or just a small group, and it's easier, isn't it?

SPEAKER_03 1:28:34

So and is that a sense of community important to you despite you being so shy?

SPEAKER_04 1:28:39

Yes. And I always have to be reminded of that, and I do occasionally, like when I went to college or when I went to university, or when I went to learn start printing at a print club, or go into galleries talking to people, I always get reminded that I can't just sit here and paint. Well, I can, yeah, and I'll get good at it because I'll do it all the time. I always see it as you can only learn so much when you're working all the time, not seeing anything else.

SPEAKER_03 1:29:10

Back to what we said before about the inputs. If you're always on canvas and you're not interacting with people, you're not going to get different inputs, your work's always going to stay the same.

SPEAKER_04 1:29:16

Yeah. So you need that for to progress your artwork. How do you think your art progressed potentially? Like you said, I've I've done physical collaborations with other artists. There's lots of problem solving that you haven't really got you don't have the pleasure of that normally, because you you're making your own rules. But the collaborations I have done are normally here's a piece of work, do on top of what you want to do, and I'll do the same thing. But doing something different.

SPEAKER_03 1:29:47

Yeah. Still with the premise of making the art, creating it. It's not about selling it, it's just about doing something different with another human.

SPEAKER_04 1:29:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:29:54

Trying to visually express something in both styles.

SPEAKER_04 1:29:58

Yeah, like everything I've ever done, once you've do something like that and go back to your own stuff, you've got more ideas. You're informed more than you were before.

SPEAKER_03 1:30:09

And that goes with everything that you do, isn't it? I feel like we've spoken about so much here, and I feel like we've jumped around a bit, but that's absolutely fine. What's next for you? Or is it just a case? I mean, like this podcast, it might just be a case of going, do you know what, Matt? I don't know. I just want to make more art. Well, yeah, it's that it always has been. But I just wonder whether there are any projects because you've got your website and all that sort of stuff where people can go and actually purchase and which I know. Know is not the goal for you, but obviously, someone purchases a print, someone purchases an original, keeps you in paint, keeps you in creating. It's I always thank people for their support if they're willing to give me money to my uh I'm just trying to shout you out a bit more, Carl, because you're being very shy and go and look at his work, go and buy something, keep this guy creating.

SPEAKER_04 1:30:56

Ah, thank you. No, it's my pleasure, mate. I've never been good at any of that.

SPEAKER_03 1:31:00

And self-promotion's hard because you've got to have an element of look at me, how wonderful my work is, and I think very un un British in some respects. But I think we've spoken about a lot, haven't you? Mark, got another question. Yeah. You do painting and screen printing. Okay, uh let's put you on the spot. If you could choose and you're only allowed to do one.

SPEAKER_04 1:31:20

Oh yeah, you have to be painted.

SPEAKER_03 1:31:21

There you go. That was that was the question I wanted to know. That was the question I wanted to know.

Social Media: Network vs Sales

SPEAKER_04 1:31:25

I do so much stuff these days. Like I'm doing collage stuff. When I'm doing stuff on the street, it that's different.

SPEAKER_03 1:31:33

Right, because yeah, there's the street art, there's collage stuff, there's the screen printing, there's the original paintings. I'm sat you've just done a series of Carl Stimpson Lego boxes, all inspired by the old retro Lego stuff, which look wicked. There's lots going on in your artistic world, right, Carl?

SPEAKER_04 1:31:50

Yeah, definitely. And they're all as important as each other. But I think I'm less comfortable with a brush.

SPEAKER_03 1:31:59

Some music and a brush.

unknown 1:32:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:32:01

Sounds like you're the most comfortable moment in your life. Yeah. And that's a great thing. Look, instantly, people won't see this, but your smile lit up the minute I said music and a paintbrush, your face lit up.

SPEAKER_04 1:32:09

Yeah. So you can see. That's my ideal night. Yeah. Maybe a half a bottle of whiskey. And I'm like a pig in shit.

SPEAKER_03 1:32:16

Perfect. And that's fine because it's quite liberating to hear someone go, do you know what? It's not all about commercial gain of what my art does. I will do the jobs to facilitate having those wonderful nights where I can drink half a bottle of whiskey, listen to some music, and paint the shit that I want to paint. Yeah. Don't overthink it. Just do it and don't overthink it. Dude, is there anything else you'd like to talk about that we haven't? I haven't talked about music.

SPEAKER_04 1:32:40

Okay. And music is probably my main influence. What is it about music? I've always had a lot of obsessions, but that's been always the constant. My dad's record collection is bloody good. And it's predominantly black American stuff and early Jamaican, like ska and Rocksteady and disco dow.

SPEAKER_03 1:33:06

So how do you think that's had an influence? Because yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:33:08

It's that's always been there and when I was a kid. It's like pop culture. And yeah, and it's popular music. And then when I got a bit older and I was looking for my own stuff, I got into punk, got into all British stuff. I like pop music, I've always said I like pop music. But sometimes I literally take like lyrics or portraits of musicians, I'm lit literally referencing music, but I think it's always on when I'm making money. I'm always listening to stuff. It excites me as much as visual art does. Okay. And that must have Do you play anything? No. No. I sing badly when I got my earphones.

SPEAKER_03 1:33:48

Very well. But But I think does that does that go hand in hand, the music, the comic book, the pop culture?

SPEAKER_04 1:33:55

Yeah. But I just think it's it can't be always literal. If I'm putting that much music into my brain that often, yeah. It's in everything I do. Do you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_03 1:34:08

Whether it's seen or not, or whether it's obvious or not.

SPEAKER_04 1:34:11

Yeah, or if I'm conscious of it or not, it must be because it's an art form that I'm consuming daily, and it must come out like anything else does that you look at or hear. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:34:25

Can you think of any references where you can see, obviously, apart from the master plan lyrics, can you see any other references in your work where you've gone, oh that's the most heavily influenced by the music that I listen to?

SPEAKER_04 1:34:36

I really like samples. So a lot of most of hip-hop is sample. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I'm choosing hip-hop because it's it's easy. Yeah. But I think my collage work is very similar to Sonic s sampling. When taking those elements and turning them into something else, yeah, it's not just literal sampling, like the Beatles covering Motem songs, they're trying to replicate what Black America was doing at the time, and they're doing that, they come up with something else. Yeah. They were mashing things together, and that's what I do. Do you know what I mean? I mentioned music then, I can't think of any example. That's the right now.

SPEAKER_03 1:35:25

But I think, like you say, I think we're all influenced by all of these things, and again, your work has that pop culture reference, so music has to play an integral part in it, right? Yeah, of course. Yeah. We spoke about a lot. As I said, you can check out Carl's bold and somewhat nostalgic work on his website links that I'll include in all the show notes. But we do have a closing tradition, Carl, where we like to get a quote that sits with you, it can be inspiring, it can be something that resonates with you. And then also someone in your network who you think would be an interesting guest to come on to the Creative New Orleans podcast.

SPEAKER_04 1:35:59

Yeah.

Community, Collabs, and Growth

SPEAKER_03 1:35:59

In any order you like me.

SPEAKER_04 1:36:01

I mentioned Brian Eno earlier. I always quote him when he did Six Music, did a John Peel lectures, and he did one. He just said, anything you don't need to do as a human being is art.

SPEAKER_03 1:36:17

Anything you don't need to do as a human being is art. You don't need to do emphasis on the need. So eating, breathing, yeah, all that stuff. But anything else is art. Yeah. Just in how you live, how you But you should listen to it if you haven't. I will definitely have a look at that one. Brian Eno being He also said honour thy mistake as an intention. That's a good one. Honor thy mistake as an intention. Okay, we've got two there. Sorry. That's perfect, it's great. And who would you suggest from your network that you think would be an interesting guest to come on the Creative No Land podcast?

SPEAKER_04 1:36:53

One of my favourite contemporary pop artists is called Mr. Edwards. It might be a bit tricky for you because he's now based in Australia. But he does come back. He's from London way.

SPEAKER_03 1:37:05

I had the pleasure of meeting him and he's a really nice bloke as well, which is nice. And do you think he is someone that when he comes back would agree to be on it? I reckon so, yeah. Is it someone he's in your network enough that we can ask it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, great. Okay, Mr. Edwards. And he's based in Australia but comes back. Yeah, we'll have to have a look at his work, mate. Yeah. Well, Carl, as I say, I say we've spoken about a lot. I feel like we've had a an around the houses conversation, but I'm sure it'll make sense when we pull it all out in the edit. I hope so. I'm sure it will, mate. But in the meantime, thank you very much, mate. That's right. I really appreciate you. And it's great to sit down with someone that's just doing something inspiring that they love to do. So thank you again, mate. Thank you very much for having me. It was lovely. Thanks for listening to the Creative Noeland podcast. If you found anything in this episode useful or inspiring, please consider subscribing or sharing it with a friend. You can also help the podcast by clicking the support the show link in the show notes or by grabbing yourself something from the Creative Noeland shop. And here's the bonus. When you join the community through our website, you'll get a special discount code that gives you free shipping on all orders. So, before you buy anything, be sure to join the community. Every bit of support helps us keep sharing these inspiring stories. So, thanks again for listening, and until next time, explore, inspire, and create.

SPEAKER_00 1:38:37

Better to have a short life that is full of what you like doing than a long life spent in a miserable way. And so, therefore, it's so important to consider this question what do I desire to do?