From His Workspace: The Lil Kool Perspective

Originally published in TITLE Magazine.

Joshua Maupin, more popularly known as “LIL KOOL”, has been creating original characters for his cartoonish style of paintings since 2014. His characters are a mix of childhood cartoons meets modern day pop culture. His use of vibrant, flat color and black outlines is reminiscent of classic cartoons, while each character is recognizably a product of Maupin’s mind.

Originally from a small town outside of Dallas, Maupin grew up with a lot of freedom and found interest in graffiti art in his late teenage years. Like many other young people, he was ready to move on from his hometown, so he moved to New York City when he was 23 years old, 14 years ago. Ever since, he has been spreading his artwork all around the city. Literally. Maupin started out his work on the streets as a graffiti artist. Eventually, that led to his professional work. While having never taken a painting class and being completely self-taught, he has amassed over 15 thousand followers on Instagram (@lilkool) and has worked with brands like Apple, Nike, and Converse. He currently resides in Bedford-Stuyvesant (Bed Stuy), Brooklyn and has a shared studio in South Brooklyn near the Gowanus Canal.

In the midst of 2020, Maupin has been able to continue his work and find new ways to keep himself motivated. With new projects and portfolios in the works, he has branched out to new mediums and started experimenting with other ways to address his creative process.

His popular artist name, LIL KOOL, is the product of an overdressed 23-year-old looking for a job. It was 2008 and Maupin had recently moved to New York City to pursue a career in photography. He was struggling while trying to find work as a photo assistant. With limited social media, a flip phone, and his slim NYC contact list, Maupin had to figure out where photographers would hang out or how to get an email in order to get his name out there. He remembered a photographer he really liked and wanted to work with. Surprisingly, they both had a contact in common: Maupin’s father. His dad was a schoolteacher in Texas and had taught this photographer when he was younger.

The photographer agreed to help Maupin find some work and scored him some part-time gigs, but they unfortunately did not lead to anything. Finally, one day, the photographer asked him to come by his studio. Maupin was extremely excited and eager because he thought he was going to get hired. I’m sure you’re familiar with the phrase “dress to impress”. Maupin did just that. He’s always been interested in fashion and dressing well, so he put together his look and headed to the photographer’s studio.

When he got there, the photographer asked him, “What do you ideally want to do?”

To which he said, “Well, obviously, I want to essentially be a photographer. But I would like to work for you or work for somebody like you in that world, because I definitely want to do more fashion, editorial based stuff to get better.”

He kind of laughed, and then he looked at Maupin and said, “Man, I would never hire you.”

“What? Why?”

He just casually said, “Dude, you look too cool. More people would ask about you on set than me. And people would automatically think that you're the photographer.”

Imagine losing out on a job because you’re too stylish. Hey, at least he got a KOOL name out of it.

Being a full-time artist, what does a typical day for you look like?

I have a little routine of doing some activities. I find time to do some sketches in the morning, or lately it's been a lot of emails. Since I’ve been doing so much commercial work lately, I have to do a lot of design revisions. So, it's kind of boring. But I'll try to get that done as soon as I get up. I kind of think about my art on the execution side. Like a production. I try to keep it where it's like this painting is due on this date. Even if I don't have a solid deadline, I still try to keep it like that just so it maintains a flow. Then I come in [to my studio] and try to juggle maybe three to four paintings, working on them simultaneously especially if there's a show coming up, or if I’m pushing for my clients to buy stuff, or portfolio stuff. With the pandemic, I've probably been a little looser this year. It's been kind of nice actually, because I've looked at this as an experimental year. So, I can try out new things. I don't have to sit there and work in one medium like I used to in the past. It's been kind of nice to be able to have the extra free time.

How do you utilize your workspace to promote creativity and productivity?

So, my space is usually mostly white. Every time I'm moving to a new space, I paint everything white. It's like a fresh start. I allow myself to not have very many distractions. When I'm in here, usually what’s hanging up is canvases that I've recently stretched that are about middle to almost done. Then, I'll have a couple paintings that are done. But most of the time I have a pretty strict discipline where when a painting is done, I make sure it's put away because it's easier to manage. Also, I don't want to get any work dirty from other painting projects. For the most part I try to keep my mind pretty open when I come here, and try to get in the right mood, especially when you're creating a new painting. I think my work is becoming more pure because [of] the fact that things have been allowed to slow down. I keep kind of imagining myself or other painters in the community that we’re kind of living in like the 1950s of New York. Where things were really dead and there wasn't a lot going on. So, a lot of painters were either in their studio or putting their heart and soul into everything they did, because there was nothing else to do. In a sense, I'm kind of thinking of myself like that right now like, ‘Oh, I have nothing to do today, but paint this painting.’ It's really been fun because to be able to live in New York City, and also not give yourself too much responsibility is kind of the best outcome about living here. I can give myself so much to do, and it's so exciting that I actually have time to do it.

How do you get yourself in the mood to start creating?

Ah, so that's kind of funny. I listen to like really obnoxious, loud techno music or I'll listen to a book. When I'm in the zone, I'm probably a little ADD—I mean I definitely am, they told me when I was a kid. So, I definitely noticed me playing certain fast paced music that has a beat [that] allows me to stay on track sometimes because my brain will think about it as a kind of rhythm. That helps to keep me going. But same time, I definitely got into a lot of like, Kurt Vonnegut books. Got into Malcolm Gladwell. Some authors who I have forgotten about. I definitely went down the wormhole on some communism and anarchy theory. I do like to learn while I’m painting, because there is a lot of simple tasks that I'm doing. It's nice to have a book playing in the background that I can listen to. It's cool, because I feel like painting is such a meditation that it's cool that you can be extremely focused on what you're listening to, while you're doing it [painting].

What kinds of new mediums are you working with?

This year, I've been working with a lot of fashion stuff. Which I've always wanted to get into, but it was just hard to build a budget for it, because getting stuff made can get really expensive. I started to do some more graphics on T-shirts and hoodies and limited edition run[s] of certain things. I started to do some oil paintings, which I've never done before. That's been exciting to explore. I build all my own canvases and stretch them myself in my studio. I have a little fabrication studio that's attached to it. That allows me to design the actual painting and get a sense of what it looks like, how the canvases will lay. It's allowed me to slow down in a way to rethink a process and to execute it in a different way. I've been taking drop cloth canvas and laying it down on the table and when I dye—I've been dyeing the clothing for some of these T-shirt projects and hoodie projects—the canvas gets dye all over. It comes out with this cool, natural, inherently flawed, kind of intentional error, pattern with all these different color bursts and washed out colors, and some of its really faded, some of its dark. Then, I've been painting on top of that, so it gives it an extra depth and more organic feel to it, because it was naturally done. My whole goal was thinking an execution would be less is more, like doing more with less steps. To know that I can finish a painting now in half the time, rather than before having to sit there and paint all the color in. It's like mind blowing for me right now.

With the way 2020 has panned out, do you feel like you have been able to take on more projects and create more than usual?

I'm creating more because I just have more time. Like, in 2019, some months were slower than others on my commercial side. And if I wasn't selling paintings, like all the time, it would be hard to catch up. I'd work like odd jobs, or I would just do art handling more or less. So that it would take up some of my time. And, in 2018, I sold a lot of work. I was doing so much in 2018, that I didn't have time to keep creating that same year. So, by the end of the year, I was pretty spent. And then 2019 I just had a hard start on like my concepts for the following year. I think until I was 19, I mostly felt like I was just trying to catch up, keeping my head out of water. And this year, it was like real nice to be able to sit back, not having to really worry about it too much. Since I'm not going out as often, I'm actually saving money and keeping simplified. But it actually has been nice to kind of just slow down a bit.

How are you maintaining your mental health? Picking up any new hobbies?

I think [doing] the things I didn't have time to do, that I'm doing now. I definitely took the time and refined a lot of things. Like drawing. I think drawing is such a good thing. I believe drawing is like the most control you'll ever have in your life, just you and the pencil on the paper. You can do whatever you want. To let your brain fully relax and create solid progress in drawing that can lead to other projects for yourself is a very exciting thing. I was doing so much, and I really didn't have time to just draw. I picked it back up and I was like, ‘Oh my god, this is amazing.’ I forgot how much I enjoyed it. And at the same time, I was allowing myself to try things and be experimentive. That was exciting. From a day to day perspective, I probably play video games more than I should be. Been cooking a lot, which has been fun. I baked a chocolate cake the other day. I baked some banana bread. We're gonna take a pecan pie for Thanksgiving. Like simple little things. During the summer, it was fun. I went to the park and went on bike rides. Just walking around [was] actually so fun. I was walking from my house to the lower east side of the city and it was such a nice walk. Or I would meet up at the park with a group of friends. And we would be socially responsible and hang out outside. It was really kind of nice.