Welcome, beer lovers and art enthusiasts! 🍻🎨

You’ve just cracked open a can of our limited-edition Hazy Pale Ale, and we’re so glad you’re here! 🌞✨ This exclusive brew is all about celebrating bold flavours, creativity, and good vibes—so what better way to bring it to life than with stunning artwork from the talented Carl Stimpson?

Join us for a special chat with Nirvana’s founder, Becky, as she sits down with Carl to talk about the inspiration behind this summer’s one-of-a-kind can design. Plus, we’ll dive into the thriving local art scene that surrounds our brewery, shining a light on the incredible creativity that fuels both our beer and our community.

So pour yourself a peachy pint, sit back, and soak in the story behind the art. Cheers! 🍑🍻

You can read the transcript from this exclusive interview right here:

Becky:
Hello, viewers. I am Becky, the founder of Nirvana Brewery, and we are here in the industrial heart of East London at Nirvana Brewery, where we've been brewing alcohol free beer since 2016. And today we are here with a very special guest who has designed the artwork for our new limited edition Summer Brew. So this, I am delighted to say, is Carl Stimpson

Carl:
Hello.

Becky:
He's a local Leyton artist and the designer of a work called “Blossom” which is now featuring on our new hazy pale ale. So welcome, Carl, and thank you for working with us on this exciting project. We'll be asking you a few questions about this really cool piece. But firstly, I wonder if you could tell us a bit about you and where you from and what brings you to Leyton.

Carl:
I come from Kidderminster in the West Midlands and I've been living in Leytonstone for about three years now. 

Becky:
Cool. How long you've been working in in the sort of art form that you've been working on?

Carl:
All my life I've been a painter, and I haven't really stopped since I was a kid.

Becky:
Your style is really unique. I really like the way that you take an existing image and then reappropriate it. What influences your work and how do you come up with these things?

Carl:
I just carry on really and then experiment and mess around with stuff. And in the past five or six years I've been a screenprint maker, which completely changed my practice because I was predominantly a painter. Before then, I used to mimic prints from comics and branding or industrial brands, using my brush and I was very neat - really neat, so my brush control through years of practice, was how I can get things very flat. Then when I started screen printing, I still stuck to what I knew and started hand colouring all the prints. So I'd brush paint all the colour on and, and then screenprint black on top of it.

But because I was doing editions of 20 and 50, I was doing all of it one go and slapping the paint on, doing the next one as quick as I could. I could then print onto it. When I then went back to my painting, it completely loosened me - up which needed to happen because I was really, really anal you know, very neat. But now because I could mess around with an image and do different takes on it very quick (Well, relatively quickly) I could go “what if that was red or blue?” and increase my output.

Becky:
Yeah. Then Screenprint gives you a new inspiration to work with and to manipulate.

Carl:
Yeah! And to just experiment. That’s the thing I think for artists to be able to mess around with stuff and see what happens.

Becky:
Yeah. So tell us a bit about this piece. What's it called and when did you make it, and what gave you the idea?

Carl:
I come across this “face stripe” thing a few years ago and again, just from messing around things. I like a lot of graphics, and was drawn to record sleeves, where there's always sort of a band with text or information on, or just as a graphic style. I was messing around with that and recreating fictitious record sleeves. As I was messing around and I just put a bar through instead of a face. And then I kept repeating that and then thinking, What if I do that on say - Daffy Duck or other characters!

Before then, I had I shied away from using cartoon characters, I just thought it was a bit too obvious to do. But people liked it! And I've always loved the Powerpuff Girls because it's fast and bright and exciting.

Becky:
Yeah, it’s cool! And the colour as well - I love the fact that it works really well for us with our Hazy Pale Ale. It kind of gives notes of summer, you know, and with the name “Blossom” - I think really lends itself to a summery beer.

Carl:
Yeah, definitely.

Becky:
That's one of the reasons we were really drawn to it - looking for a piece that links well with our brew. It summed up quite a lot of what we wanted to show with our beer. So yeah, I love it. It's really cool.

So being a Leyton business and an East London brewery and working with the local area, being involved in arts scene in the local area has been really important to us.

I'd love to hear what the local area means to you.

Carl:
We moved here about three years ago and we've lived all over East London and a bit of North London, but we found ourselves in Leytonstone just at the end of COVID, and it was the first time we've ever sort of felt part of the community and we loved it! We hadn'tt really come here before we moved.

Becky:
Yeah, it's, it's a really cool place to be. And the creative projects in the area are amazing!

Carl:
Yeah, definitely. There's lots of artists here. And we also got involved with the Leytonstone Arts Trail, and helped with anything we could. That was very nice because we met loads of local artists. There's a massive group of artists doing good stuff.

Becky:
It's a wonderful initiative and it's how we found you as well! Can you tell us where some of the other places are that people can find your art?

Carl:
I'm with several galleries. Such as the ATOM gallery in Stoke Newington - they made me start a printing! They said that they could sell my worl, but they normally do screen prints. So I owe it to them that I print now. Also, my last two entries into the Leytonestone Arts Trail are still on show, in “The Birds Pub” on the high road in Leytonstone. I go in waves of being quite prolific with that sort of stuff and I have work all around on the streets of London!

Becky:
Wow! Keep your eyes peeled! Yeah.

Carl:
I also recently got into pasting-up! There's a good community of artists across the world who all share each others work. So they send it to somewhere and it's pasted-up. I’ve had stuff on the walls in Budapest!

Lots of places have ‘paste-up’ festivals and there’s a lot of ‘street art’ festivals too, so, you know, that's cool. You send you work there and they show it. There’s one in East London called the London Paste-Up Festival!

Becky:
And does being in Leyton influence your work?

Carl:
Yeah, you're always taking stuff in. So if you're living somewhere, your subconscious does a lot of work. You don't really realize that. Plus, obviously my street art - a lot of that goes on right here (because it's handy) So whereever you are, it's is going to have an effect, if that makes sense!

Becky:
Definitely. And we've loved working with you on this. It's been a really cool project for us and we can't wait for people to taste the beer, to see the artwork and see the can. Before we wrap up, what does this collaboration with Nirvana Brewery mean to you?

Carl:
I love beer. I love packaging. So for my stuff to be on packaging. Yeah, it excites me when it's part of the work. And as a collaboration: you're helping me, I’m helping you. And that thing exists because of what we do.

Becky:
Yeah. Your work is a manipulation of an existing image, and then the design in the can is a manipulation of that. And it's this kind of metamorphosis, you know, of the art into various forms.

Carl:
Yeah! And then who knows who will take that label and do something with it! Because you can do that with those kind of cans! I'm doing a lot of collages at the minute. I'm taking my own work, ripping it up and taking other stuff and mixing it in with it. It's all part of what we do!

Becky:
Well, thanks so much for coming in, Carl. And thank you for working with us on this!

Carl:
It's a pleasure!

Becky:
We can't wait for everyone to taste the beer and see Carl’s art! Cheers!

Carl:
Cheers!

🍻

We hope you've enjoyed this deep dive into the artistic world of Leytonstones Carl Stimpson. If you loved the beer, and you love the art, why not cherish this moment and grab a limited edition t-shirt, commemorating Nirvana and Carl stimpsons incredible collaboration, right here:

GET THE T-SHIRT

GET THE T-SHIRT

Carl Stimpson is a British painter and printmaker known for his bold, graphic style that draws heavily from pop culture and commercial imagery. Born in Kidderminster, West Midlands, he studied Fine Art at The Arts Institute of Bournemouth and now lives and works in London. Stimpson’s work is deeply influenced by the 'ligne claire' technique pioneered by Hergé, creator of Tintin, as well as by late 20th-century British music and industrial branding.

His work has been showcased in solo exhibitions such as Instant Mash at Atom Gallery and Cut and Shut at the Union Club, and featured in group shows like the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition.Beyond galleries, his art can also be spotted on the streets of London.

And you can discover more of Carl Stimpsons artwork here: