-by John Gillis
An artist with Inverness roots is enjoying a greater public profile recently upon his artwork being the subject of a cover feature in Heavy Metal magazine.
David Stoupakis was born in Newton, Massachusetts and while he has long been a resident of New York City, he spent many of his summers here in Inverness.
David is the son of George and Anne Stoupakis of Inverness, owners of Coal Miner’s Café.
The Oran caught up with David at his New York City home this week
Stoupakis said it was “like a childhood dream” to be featured in Heavy Metal magazine since it played such a big role in his childhood.
The feature resulted after the publisher of the magazine was made aware of David’s work through two gallery shows in the United States in recent years.
Stoupakis studied for one year in 1992 at the Art Institute of Boston, and while he credits his art teachers in helping him become the artist he is, he is primarily self-taught.
“I learned so much from my father and not many people know it but he was a painter himself and he always helped me out with colour theory and perspective and things like that. Very early on I was found to be with a pretty severe learning disability so in turn I gravitated more towards my creative side and my parents saw that within me. I was very fortunate because my parents got behind me and I have a lot of friends whose parents didn’t get behind their artistic endeavours,” said Stoupakis.
Stoupakis says Cape Breton has always played a formative role in his artwork even though the work is often based in fantasy.
“Cape Breton Island is a huge, huge influence in a lot of my work. Even on the cover of Heavy Metal there are images in that painting that are inspired by the cliffs in Sight Point. That’s also very much the case with much of my new work, Salem. I’m very interested by fantasy, fables, and folklore but in turn I try to make it my own folklore,” said Stoupakis.
Although the subject matter of some of his work appears very dark, Stoupakis is a very positive person.
In the early 1990s, David ran a mural company and worked for a video gaming company. Those endeavours always meant paying attention to the vision of his clients, but now, at this stage in his career, he is feeling fortunate and grateful that he is able to pick and choose who he wants to work with. These days he’s apt to jump onto commercially creative projects such as being able to collaborate with the author Joe Hill – one of David’s favourite authors and the son of novelist Stephen King.
David’s profile is really increasing in the U.S. art world and he looks forward to doing a gallery show in New York City and possibly getting his work better known in Europe in the coming years.
“Nowadays, social media is really where it’s at; even the galleries are aware of it. My generation of artist is all about self- promotion, whereas earlier generations of artists would often rely on a gallery to get their work out there. As much as it can be crazy and really tough, it’s also been great in a number of ways,” he added.
Stoupakis says he has a few projects for the metal bands Mastadon and Korn and then he plans to work on a very big project that will not only be a body of work for a gallery show but there will be a book and stories to go with each piece.
Check out more of David’s work at www.davidstoupakis.com.
