Meet RAD Artists: Craig & Karl

The Rumpl Artist Division (R.A.D.) is a collaborative program that showcases the work of accomplished and upcoming artists who use diverse mediums to inspire creativity in impassioned communities around the world.  LEARN MORE >

• Craig & Karl are an artist duo working across design, illustration, animation and installation. They collaborate daily, from their respective bases in New York and London, creating bold, playful, multi-disciplinary work rooted in an evolving exploration of colour, pattern, shape and texture.

• Where are you each from, and how would you describe your art style?

• We're both from Australia but now live in New York (Craig) and London (Karl). Our style is visually bold and bright – we use a lot of color and simple graphic forms and patterns throughout our work.

• What motivates you to create? Where do you draw your inspiration from?

• Ultimately, we enjoy the process and want to develop what we're doing – experimenting with different methods or new formats. Inspiration comes from anywhere and everywhere – it's more like being dialled to a particular frequency where something which might seem completely random or insignificant chimes with a thought simmering away in the background.

• What sort of themes do you incorporate into your art and designs?

• We often look at everyday stuff from our lives or shared experiences from popular culture – the idea of the profound in the mundane, which we can riff on or suffuse with an element of humor. A lot of the time, we're also aiming for a particular mood or emotion.

• Tell us about your passions and how they transfer to your work.

• Mostly, we try to inject a sense of ourselves and our personalities – the jumble of high and low culture in our brains – into our work to make it unique and feel like us.

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• Can you tell us more about your Rumpl design and the inspo behind this design/color palette specifically?

• Over the past few years, we started doing more hand-drawn artwork, which tended towards invented landscapes and the natural world but with a similar eye towards simplified forms and repetition, which we've always used. And since Rumpl is about the outdoors, it seemed like a great fit. The color palette stems from vintage outdoor and hiking gear, with a mix of natural tones alongside more vibrant or even garish ones – something we always enjoy.

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• What's it like working as a duo? What are the dynamics? How do you feed off each other? Etc.

• We often refer to our way of working as a conversation between us. There's an ongoing back and forth from discussing how we want to approach something – to developing ideas – to making the final artwork. It can also be as simple as having a second set of trusted eyes to look at something.

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• Favorite project you've ever done?

• Last year, we designed a mini golf course for Canary Wharf in London. We conceived it to look and feel like an immersive art installation but completely interactive. It's the first time we've made something that people can completely engage with like that, and it's been a revelation. We want to do more!

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• What's the best piece of advice you've ever received?

• Don't suffer imagined troubles.

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• What's next for you in 2023? What's coming up?

• We've just opened our first solo exhibition in Guangzhou in China, and which will be traveling to other cities in China. It's five immersive spaces inviting visitors into the Craig & Karl world. We also have a new outdoor installation in Hong Kong, taking over a city park.