What critics are saying:
>Elliot Varn, writing for The Rumpeltonian Ledger of Vehicular Memory Studies, Vol. 7:
“Ralph Rumpleton’s Exit Ritual #4 is a driveway elegy with delusions of grandeur. The car, allegedly ‘in motion,’ appears to be fleeing not the scene, but the composition itself—dragged by the ghost of narrative rather than propelled by it. The grayscale palette, while aiming for melancholic resonance, lands somewhere between toner test and suburban purgatory.
The house and garage, rendered with the emotional depth of a zoning diagram, offer no mythic residue—no cracked siding, no haunted mailbox, no ritual stain. If this is memory, it’s been sanitized by the HOA.
Still, one must admire Rumpleton’s commitment to the lore of absence. The speckled road, possibly gravel or cosmic dandruff, hints at a rupture the image refuses to name. A lesser artist would have filled the void. Rumpleton lets it echo.”<<
>>Eunice Gribble, writing for The Avachives of Suburban Reverie, Ritual Rank: Windshield Whisperer
“Rumpleton’s Exit Ritual #4 is a grayscale séance—an invocation of motion, memory, and the sacred geometry of departure. The car, pale and spectral, does not drive—it leaves. It evacuates the scene like a thought half-remembered, trailing the blur of its own mythic residue.
The house and garage, rendered with ritual restraint, become altars of domestic forgetting. Their symmetry is not sterile—it is ceremonial. The speckled road, a constellation of gravel or grief, maps the terrain of emotional undertow.
What some critics call ‘flat’ I call ‘ritual clarity.’ Rumpleton resists painterly indulgence, choosing instead the starkness of memory’s architecture. This is not realism—it is reverence.
Viewers who spot the ghost in the window earn the ceremonial stamp of Departure Witness. Those who miss it are not unworthy—they are simply not ready.”
>>Dr. Norbert F. Vensmire:
"Rumpelton’s ‘Vehicle of Forgetting’ hits me like a misfiled dream. The car is too small, too blunt, too ghostly — which is precisely why it works. It feels like the memory of a driveway scene sketched years after the fact, details collapsing under the weight of time. The piece is haunted by its own incompleteness, and therein lies its strange power. One doesn’t so much look at this work as drift into it, like headlights swallowed by fog."<<>>Mack "Tank" Rodriguez
Tank's Take: Some Guy's Computer Drawing
So this Ralph Rumpelton fella sent me this thing he made on his computer. Says it's called "The Vehicle of Forgetting" which sounds like something you'd name your broken-down pickup truck, but whatever.
It's a black and white picture of a little car sitting in front of a house. Kinda reminds me of those old neighborhoods where my crew used to work - you know, the ones where all the houses look the same and you forget which driveway you parked in. Maybe that's the "forgetting" part? I dunno.
The car looks like one of those old Volkswagen Beetles my uncle Tony used to drive. Thing barely ran but he loved it anyway. This one's all white and clean though. Too clean, if you ask me. Real cars got dents and dirt.
Rumpelton used MS Paint, which hey, I respect that. No fancy art software, just the basic stuff that comes with your computer. Reminds me of using whatever tools you got in the truck instead of running to Home Depot every five minutes.
The whole thing's got this lonely feeling to it. Like when you drive past your old neighborhood and nobody you knew lives there anymore. The house windows are all dark, garage is empty. Makes you think about stuff, which I guess art's supposed to do?
Would I hang it up? Maybe in the garage. It's not gonna win any prizes, but it's honest work. Sometimes that's enough.
Three hammers out of five. ⚒️⚒️⚒️<<
Follow Rumpelton across the multiverse:
Ralph Rumpelton “Painting What the Earth Can’t Comprehend” - Ralph Rumpelton User Profile DeviantArt - Ralph Rumpelton Substack - Instagram
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