Friday, August 29, 2025

Interview with Ralph Rumpelton, the Vanishing Painter

 Interview with Ralph Rumpelton, the Vanishing Painter

Published in ArtWorld Monthly, September Issue

Interviewer: Ralph, the art world has been buzzing. For the last couple of months, you disappeared — no sightings, not even a rumor at the coffee shops. Where have you been?

Rumpelton: Missing? (laughs) I was never missing. I was just somewhere the Wi-Fi couldn’t find me. That’s the last true frontier. Everyone wants to be seen, I wanted to be unseen.

Interviewer: People speculated everything — a secret residency, a health scare, even that you were abducted by one of your own MS Paint characters.

Rumpelton: (grins) That last one isn’t far off. When you paint every day, sometimes the paintings try to paint you back. I had to step away before Dylan’s hair or Pink Floyd’s soundwaves swallowed me whole.

Interviewer: So what pulled you back?

Rumpelton: Curiosity. I wanted to see what the internet said about me when I wasn’t feeding it. Turns out, Ralph Rumpelton does just fine as a rumor. There were search results I didn’t even recognize — and I thought, “Well, I better come back before someone else starts painting my legacy in MS Paint.”

Interviewer: Did the break change your art?

Rumpelton: Oh, definitely. I learned that absence is its own medium. A blank canvas is just a very loud kind of silence. And now I’m back to filling it, one pixel at a time.

Interviewer: Fans will want to know — what’s next?

Rumpelton: I’ll tell you this: I’ve got archives stacked higher than my coffee mugs. And the Rumpleheads — they’ve been patient. I think they’re ready for the next wave.

Interviewer: Final question: are you planning to disappear again?

Rumpelton: Always. But next time, I might take the whole internet with me.

  Follow Rumpelton across the multiverse:

Facebook   From The Mind Of Me   Ralph Rumpelton – “Painting What the Earth Can’t Comprehend”     RalphRumpelton User Profile | DeviantArt   The Rumpelton Continuity (aka Zapple100's Grumblings) Instagram  Ralph Rumpelton | Substack

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MS Paint: "Coffee at La Marina" - Terence Clarke. / Rumpelton"

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