As conducted by Peregrine Swale, Senior Correspondent for Unearned Prestige Quarterly
Swale: Mr. Rumpelton, thank you for agreeing to this interview. I understand you prefer to be addressed not as an artist, but as a “pixel conservationist.” Can you clarify what that means?
Rumpelton: Absolutely. Traditional artists waste pixels. They splash them around like cheap paint. I, on the other hand, allow each pixel to earn its right to exist. If a pixel is in my work, it has been interviewed, vetted, and given a union card.
Swale: That sounds time-consuming.
Rumpelton: It is. That’s why each piece takes anywhere from six minutes to twelve minutes, depending on lunch.
On the Origins of the ‘Avachives’
Swale: Your Avachives Series has been described by critics as “a labyrinth of digital memory” and “a filing system having a nervous breakdown.” How did it begin?
Rumpelton: I was trying to organize my desktop and accidentally dragged a folder into a folder into a folder. By the time I found it again, it felt like archaeology. I knew then I had discovered a new movement: administrative surrealism.
On Influences
Swale: Which artists influence you most?
Rumpelton: Mostly the ones I've never heard of. It keeps my style pure. If I start liking someone’s work, I immediately forget their name and mispronounce it later in interviews.
On His Tools
Swale: You famously work exclusively in Microsoft Paint.
Rumpelton: Yes. I find more advanced programs offensive. Layers? Undo history? That’s cheating. If the Renaissance masters didn't have a “blur tool,” why should I?
Swale: They also didn’t have Windows 95.
Rumpelton: Exactly — imagine how good they could have been.
On Interpretation
Swale: Some viewers claim your work is humorous. Others say it’s tragic. How do you respond?
Rumpelton: If someone laughs, it’s humor. If someone cries, it’s tragedy. If someone buys it, it’s art.
On the Multiverse Theory of Composition
Swale: You’ve stated that every painting you make exists simultaneously in “several adjacent dimensions.” Could you expand on that?
Rumpelton: Certainly. Whenever Paint freezes and I have to restart the computer, it splits the timeline. I simply choose the universe where the piece looks slightly less terrible.
On Legacy
Swale: Finally, how would you like future generations to remember Ralph Rumpelton?
Rumpelton: Ideally? As a myth. A rumor. A smudge in art history textbooks that can’t be fully erased. And above all, as the man who proved—once and for all—that the “fill bucket” is a philosophical instrument.
Swale: Profound.
Rumpelton: I try not to be.
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