Collection #9 Greg "Craola" Simkins

Let me just start off saying that I am a BIG fan of Blink 182, probably my favorite band I grew up with, I think all their albums are great. I have their page on my facebook and they posted about their friend's next showing to be taken place at Merry Karnowsky Gallery in Los Angeles, CA.

This is the website to the gallery he is showing his work :
http://mkgallery.com/index.php

I chose to write about this artist because his work is of the morbid side, which I love but also because there is a lot of detail in all his pieces. I believe he did some work for Blink but I'm not exactly sure what. The collection he did for the Merry Karnowsky Gallery was written about in the American Art Collector Magazine: 
http://www.americanartcollector.com/
Doing a little snooping, I found his Facebook page :

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Greg-Craola-Simkins/126782594001871?__adt=3&__att=iframe
Which then led me to his website :
http://www.imscared.com/
Simkins started drawing when he was as young as three years old with crayons and pencils which turned into using pen and other ink forms, and is now into acrylic paints. Movies which bring about the outside world is mostly where his inspiration comes from, the "falling down the rabbit hole" effect of imaginative and alternative realities. His art incorporates these worlds and different aspects of nature which until he has painted it so, could never interact with each other. He describes how certain land animals would never be able to live alongside the ecosystem of the sea and brings them together in his work. By the age of 18 he began creating graffiti art under the name "craola" which gave him the opportunity to experiment with large spaces for canvases. He then moved on to working at Treyarch/ Activision and did work on Tony Hawk 2X, spiderman 2 and ultimate Spiderman.

After looking through the extensive gallery on Simkins page, I am blown away, utterly inspired because i havnt done much painting lately, and he is now my new favorite artist!

This is the first painting that really caught my eye, yet after that they just kept getting better. I love the originality of his work and the morbid type of quality, theres so much in one painting if you look close enough there are a lot of different creatures. It's beautiful, how they're sitting on a cloud yet they're head stones in it. He did do some work for AFI and this painting reminds me of some of their albums.
"Elil and Fu Inle"-36x30 in Acrylic canvas. 2011

Everyone knows South Park and how Kenny dies in every episode, here's a rendition of Kenny being an angel. I love the detail and shading in this one, in all of them.
"Kenny Angel"-18x12 in- Acrylic on canvas, 2011

The last painting I want to show, I love because they way he painted the pumpkins just give it a morbid but beautiful quality. I really love Halloween and you can see closely different symbols he was trying to make like how the crayon says "escape", in other words that he is implying how art is an escape.
"Join Me"-20x30in Acrylic on canvas, 2011

On his website he has an abundance of drawings, paintings and graffiti work that he has done, I left his website at the top so you should definitely check him out. Simkins has generated a lot of fan bass and many of his fans have went as far as getting his art tattooed on them.
This one is pretty sweet, it kinda looks like a more morbid Blink bunny coming out of this guys chest.

Looking at his work, makes me have better ideas for what I want tatted on my back. hmmm this is a thought now.

Had to add this one! Rendition of Edward Scissor Hands!