Greg “Craola” Simkins

California / USA

Greg Simkins, or better known as Craola, has accrued a career as an artist that went from a graffiti writer to a sought-after surrealist painter today who set his artistic stamp on a wide variety of industries like clothing, video games and even toys. His works are featured as a part of the opening of the URBAN NATION Museum in 2017. […]

Biography / Greg “Craola” Simkins

Greg Simkins, or better known as Craola, has accrued a career as an artist that went from a graffiti writer to a sought-after surrealist painter today who set his artistic stamp on a wide variety of industries like clothing, video games and even toys. His works are featured as a part of the opening of the URBAN NATION Museum in 2017.

Craola was born in 1975 in Torrance, California, and started painting at the age of three inspired by cartoons and books. At the age of 18, graffiti became his impetus for creating and gave him the confidence to paint larger works by teaching him perspective and colour theory. After receiving his bachelor in Studio Art from California State University in 1999, Simkins worked as an illustrator for clothing and video game companies, before he decided to be a full-time artist in 2005. Since then he is carefully weaving pop culture, the old masters, nature, carnival kitsch and his warped imagination to astonishing surrealist paintings exhibited in museums and galleries worldwide.