"Tompkins' work is almost like as if the entire Dr. Seuss series of children books (not as if that series wasn't bizarre enough) went on a 14 day LSD binge with all the other necessary drug accoutrements like in "Fear and Loathing Las Vegas" pure chaotic beauty." - Empty Kingdom STEPHEN TOMPKINS is an American artist, animator, and composer based in Southern California. Tompkins' work explores the duality of visible/invisible worlds as told through a 'hallucinogenic cartoon lens' as well as animated stream-of-consciousness cartoon manifestations. His drawings and paintings explore the nature of 'intuitive cartoon production' to elucidate seemingly random, partially formulated, fragmented identities. In Tompkins work, the subjects are often effaced, scrambled, contorted, melted, exploded and forced in and out of being in the same frame as mutant comic identities. Tompkins continually contorts and forces the rudimentary forms of the cartoon into physically impossible fantastic worlds