Travis Lampe

Travis Lampe’s work occupies a singular territory that is woebegone, disturbing, yet strangely endearing. His bizarre, retro animation style characters are humorously cartoonish and delightfully expressive, populating a visual world of gloomy worm-like beings, rubbery trees, and figures with bandy shoelace arms. Born and raised in a very small town in Kansas, Lampe graduated in Graphic Design from Fort Hays State University before relocating to Chicago, where he lives and works. After serving as an art director and undertaking commercial projects for breakfast cereals and furniture stores, he turned his focus full time to personal artwork.

Lampe’s iconography draws from Old Mickey Mouse cartoons, Dr. Seuss, and what he describes as “moving pictures, the more elbow-less the better.” As he explains, “exaggerated sadness is funny to me for some reason.” His past work includes the yellow Color Bear used in the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art’s 2008 “Fear No Art” campaign, and the “Tear Drips” toys first released in 2009. He currently runs Fantasy Cryland, the merchandising arm for his creative output, while his original paintings have been featured in exhibitions in Seattle, Chicago, Los Angeles, Art Basel Miami, and Berlin.

His earliest artistic memories trace back to his grandfather, a locally respected artist of the Bob Ross Happy Trees school, who provided art lessons about perspective and how to draw trees. Among the most rewarding aspects of creation, Lampe cites putting the highlights on and seeing that it all turned out alright, so that “now a funny thing exists that never did before.” He received formative advice from Gary Baseman: “Be honest with yourself about how good your work is. Is it as good as the successful artists out there? Are you giving people something they can’t get somewhere else? If not, change what you’re doing.” Looking ahead, audiences can anticipate new toys, new art shows, and his 2018 painting “The Fancy Magicians,” created for a BLAB show, which channels his love of synchronized movement and period costumes alongside the creepiness found in Freemasons iconography and alchemical paintings.