S I M P S O N S W A V E Is Literally A Joke

S I M P S O N W A V E by Palm Treat

Simpsonwave is a Joke That Music Journalism Isn't In On

I have never been one to read published rags like Rolling Stone Magazine or NME, although it is secretly one of my life goals to somehow end up in an issue of Rolling Stone Magazine. There is even that stupid song from the 70's about being on the cover of the Rolling Stone, or at least there is in Almost Famous.

All of that jibberish aside, it occurs to me that it might actually be easier than I had previously imagined to get into Rolling Stone Magazine. I guess I shouldn't call them out specifically since a quick Google search didn't turn up their name in this embarrassing journalism faux pas, but if they were slightly less clueless they would also be doing their own flawed research into the subject. I'm talking, of course, about the joke that is Simpsonwave: the accidental joke on the music journalism industry that caught on instantly and which music bloggers and the like (see: theverge.com) have been feverishly reporting as though it is a real thing, I guess because of the fear of missing out on the next big thing.

No one wants to be the one to overlook the next Van Gogh, I guess, and in the digital age this fear of missing out (FOMA) has been amped up by the insular echo chamber of social media to insane levels. Insane to the point of representing a music genre suggested as a joke by an admin in a Simpson's Facebook meme page as the real deal. Google search it and it seems to be everywhere overnight: YouTube channels, every music blog ever, there's even a sub Reddit for it (/r/simpsonwave/). A Google search of the term makes it seem like a thriving and vibrant underground community that has exploded right under the noses of music snobs everywhere, literally overnight.

So, how does a pop artist like myself who slangs posters and websites for a living have any insight into a supposed music genre carelessly reported over and over by those smarter and more in the know as hard core fact, here to stay, sign of the times… wave of the future? Because I know who started the joke. I was there when he started the joke, I am also an admin in said Facebook meme group.

So how is that people who talk about music for a living are unable to drill down to the bottom, even a drill a little - hell, you don't have to drill very far - to figure out that a bunch of shitposters have pulled one over on them? I can only pose the question because I have no fucking clue, but it looks like my dream of being in Rolling Stone Magazine died while David Bowie's corpse is pretty much still warm to the touch. (But incredibly before Keith Richards)

By the way, you can shop for Palm Treat's dope art at palmtreat.design

The Itchy & Scratchy & Palm Treat Show

Meta on top of meta: Breaking the 4th wall

Everyone's Favorite Show Within a Show Within a Show

According to Matt Groening, the inspiration for the Itchy & Scratchy Show was Tom & Jerry. He has said that in his youth he and his friends would excitedly talk about if Tom & Jerry featured ultra-violence instead of cartoon violence, and would invent gruesome alternate senarios. This childhood banter stuck in his mind and years later when he created The Itchy & Scratchy Show as a clip show within the Krusty the Klown Show and he was finally able to bring this concept to life.

As a child I watched The Tom & Jerry Show and it also occurred to my childhood self that the injuries they inflicted on one another ought to be much more severe than they were depicted on the show. I never made the connection between Tom & Jerry and Itchy & Scratchy until I read about the connection.

See more art here

Where Do You Come Up With Your Ideas?

Early Palm Treat design for a 4 inch vinyl sticker.

The Origins of Palm Treat

"Frankly, I am not sure where my ideas come from. I have been inspired by everything from passing images in my mind to brief glimpses of reflections in shop windows… anything that generates that initial flash of excitement. When I was developing the early ideas that Palm Treat's art is based on (distorted features, multiple sets of eyes, appropriated cartoon imagery) I was inspired by Facebook's early advertising failures. I read a study about how ineffective their early ad attempts were, in short no one was intentionally clicking on them. In the study I read they paid for something like 30,000 targeted views for a survey or some such thing and received something like 2 or 3 clicks that immediately bounced. I've worked as a web designer and this is an unimaginably terrible respsonse to online advertising.

The image that inspired Palm Treat.

What interested me wasn't so much the dismal performance of the ads in that experiment, but an ad that they cited that did have a very high click rate, at the time I believe it was the most successful (possibly only successful) ad that had up until that point been run on facebook. It was an image of a woman's face with an extra set of eyes and an extra mouth, and the copy asked the viewer to count the features on the face. For some reason this advertisement really caught the attention of those early Facebook users when countless hundreds of other attempts had failed, spectacularly.

This made a great impact on me, I spent days thinking about the ad and marveling at how such a simple and stupid idea was so incredibly effective when so many other advertisements had failed. I knew that our brains are configured to recognize facial patterns above all else, and that faces are very good at getting our attention, but I was endlessly facinated with how such a simple variation to the human face seemed to short circuit the brain's attention. Or maybe not short circuit our facial recognition, but more hyper activate it. Somehow a face with multiple sets of eyes triggered an incredibly strong response and a great amount of interest. It was as though our human eyes were magnetized.

As a designer I let this idea sit in my mind for the better part of a year. I knew that there was something significant or at least profitable to be done with this idea. The difficulty was figuring out how to implement it into an interesting type of art without just painting a bunch of portraits with too many eyes. Which I wasn't exactly opposed to, but it just seemed as though there must be a more effective or clever use of it.

I have always had a great interest in pop artists like Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, and Jasper Johns. I grew up on cartoons and loved how they straight up stole the cartoon imagery of their childhoods and turned it into large scale art, many times without altering it outside of the dimensions and medium. I was particularly inspired by Roy Lichtenstein's gigantic comic book panels after seeing some in person as a young child, they seemed so environmental and epic in their large scale, they were exciting. I feel that excitement is the most important factor in any type of art, arousing enthusiasm for a particular feeling or way of being.

So I ultimately landed on combining my favorite childhood cartoon, the Simpsons, with my new idea about facial distortions and repetitive patterns. I also felt that the Simpsons was a strong source to work from as they are the most popular and widely recognized cartoon characters ever conceived, I liked the idea of playing to the largest common demoninator. So, I printed out a few pictures of Bart Simpson on some shipping labels at my job and within a few minutes saw endless possiblities in exploiting the economy of form used in cartoons. Not just the Simpsons, but all cartoons… everything for that matter. It felt like sampling an image into a techno beat, it was enlightening.

From that initial discovery, I set out Photoshopping, tracing, re-drawing, hacking and cutting up everything I could find. At this point I have created years worth of source material. I have a lifetime of trippy pop art pasted together in Photoshop documents. At this point, its just about putting our stuff out there for as many people as we can find to put it in front of

Jeff Nolan sitting in front of 2 unfinished pieces.

The Simpsons and Postmodernism

The Simpsons can be defined as a postmodern cartoon. There are several aspects of the show that define it as such, such as its treatment of time. It deals with time and space in a fantastic way usually only referenced in terms of an on-screen joke or sight gag. The narrative pays no dues to the real world consequences of time or order of events unless it is in service of a joke.

Another non-linear treatment of time is shown in the way that none of the characters age or develop in any significant way from episode to episode or season to season. Twenty-Seven seasons later and Bart is still 10 years old and outside of the occasional flash-back episode or flash-forward, never ages. It is as though everyone in the show exists outside of time.

However lost in time the characters on the show may be, the world around them, particularly technology, advance around them in conjunction with that of the real world. For example, it is now common for characters on the show to use smartphone and other modern technology.

The Simpsons is self-referential, frequently giving its characters a super-agency beyond the limits of the world contained in the show. Characters often reference the FOX network (who carries the show) and break the fourth wall in a manner to suggest that they are self-aware that they are characters in a television show. This is decidedly postmodern trait.

An assorted pile of punk rock pin back buttons by Palm Treat.

Affordable Hipster Pin-Back Buttons and Simpsons Button Pins

Trippy Awesome 90s Pin Back Buttons, 90s Simpsons Themed pin-back buttons, Party Buttons, I love the 90s, 90s buttons, and Simpsons Artwork pins. Affordable Simpson's merchandise is available by Detroit Native Artists Jeff Nolan and Marie Nolan. The Simpsons pin packs are colorful and easy to find. 

Hipster punk rock pins and 90's pins are popular and are for sale online though the Palm Treat online store and website. Pins are .875" and hand punched. The artwork is Simpsons based and carefully created. These hand crafted 90's pins are durable with plastic backing and clean enamel coating on top.

Pin packs also include Catwoman comic book pins, pineapple tropical pins, cow print pins, illuminati pins, Doritos chip pins, Homer Simpson face melting pin, Bart Simpson and Bort Simpson three eyed trippy pins, Milhouse with six eyes pin, comic book vintage inspired pins, Itchy and Scratchy pins, Mr. Burns pins, and more!

The Palm Treat logo is an example of Tropicalia.

Palm Treat Pineapple Logo, Pineapple Art and Having a Tropicália Logo

Palm Treat has a one of a kind tropical art logo made on Illustrator. In the 1960's Tropicalismo was a promenade art subculture that was a Brazilian art movement. The avant-garde movement was not only visual, but musical, experimental, and theatrical.


Carmen Miranda is well known for her beautiful performance draped in tropical fruit and beautiful tropical high contrast artistic clothing. David Byrne and Mutantes are also inspired by Tropicália. Creators of Palm Treat Marie Nolan and Jeff Nolan aspire to include the late 1960's movement because of its visual properties. Pop art and folk art that Palm Treat makes include highly saturated colors, tropical print affordable artwork, neon and bright colors, decorative Brazilian art,and trippy 1960's art.

Palm Treat loves South American art and tropical colored art. Palm Treat's Marie Nolan is from Florida and often romanticizes neon banding and oceanic themes and oceanic artwork. The Brazilian concrete movement is important and inspiring for artists. pós-tropicalismo (post-tropicalism)is still highly used and shows up in many artist's work, rather they realize it or not. As American Artists, Palm Treat opened their studio in New Mexico and was heavily inspired by the Native American culture and design.

Palm Treat supports Hispanic artists and will forever be inspired by any 1960's artist movement!

Bort Simpson talking out of both sides of his mouth.

Digital Metamorphic Bart Simpson and Simpsons Stickers, Simpsons Memes! Cowabunga!

Holy Culo Simpsons fans! Palm Treat is making new designs and merchandise for the Simpsons Shitposting community.

Before you delet this from your memory please check out Palm Treat's online store and get your affordable Simpsons stickers, affordable Simpsons posters, affordable Simpsons art and Simpsons merchandise. Digital Bart Simpson is tripping out like DMT and LSD style art is going out of style. Bart Simpson stickers are coming soon too.

Marie Nolan and Jeff Nolan design pop art and colorful folk art to form a art studio full of bright colorful paintings that ship for free from Philly. How to paint a painting can be found on our art blog to help you through the process.

Let's talk about Bort Simpson art and the nostalgic Simpsons memes that takes you to a safe place with people you learn to love from all over the world in the online facebook group Simpsons Shitposting! It's a community on facebook and soon other social platforms that let people post all about the Simpsons references and memes.

By now, there are enough Simpsons memes to fill every culo in the world. Simpsons Shitposting is a fun and safe place for everyone. Just kidding the members are brutal and funny, like your real family, but better. Join Simpsons Shitposting today and become part of the family. Bring your best memes, Simpsons references, and thick skin.

Or else, you just might get delet.

Palm Treat creative director Jeff Nolan & Dingus, a cat.

How To Make Art and How To Emulate 1960s Counterculture

Pop art is important and reflects the 1960s counterculture, which is an Americana staple. Palm Treat is located on the East Coast in Philadelphia and admire artists Peter Max and Milton Glaser.

Marie Nolan and Jeff Nolan are interested in anti-war movement art and the hippie counterculture community. Examining this kind of artwork is the first step to making art.

The most important thing to do is start with an idea. An artistic idea begins with a thought, an artistic plan, and an art medium to complete this thought. An artistic thought is a subject such as a portrait of a woman. A plan can be to paint the portrait on a canvas, linoleum, wood, etc. An artist medium can be acrylic paint, gouache, eggshell paint, and even house paint. To start a painting, take your thought and make thumbnail sketches (small sketches of how you plan to fit the portrait onto the canvas).

Spend as much time as you can in this artistic phase to achieve the perfect composition. When satisfied with your composition, draw your image carefully onto your canvas. Find a bright and interesting color scheme and start painting. The coolest thing about psychedelic art is the ability to add innovative typography, personal stylization of details, diffraction patterns, and other unique techniques. If it gets weird and turns out not exactly the way the painting was planned, then you're doing it right.

Palm Treat's Jeff Nolan and Marie Nolan are inspired by pop art, outsider art, folk art, metaphysical and surrealistic subject matters. Check out Palm Treat's website for more work and artistic adventures!

Bart Simpson face folded over on itself by Palm Treat.

Bart Simpson Trippy Face and Popular Quality Psychedelia Art From Palm Treat

Bart Simpson is painted with delicate lines and CMYK colors. Affordable Simpsons art is now available and cheap in print form and digital print form online though Palm Treat. Bart Simpson shape-shifts and morphs into a Simpsons cool design that is hand drawn and painted with precise commercial art lines. Ingestion of psychoactive drugs create a visual experience and helps create mind manifesting experience with the viewer.

Simpsons psychedelic art is colorful, bright, textured, neo folk art, outsider art,and affordable. Comic book posters, zines, and underground art inspire Jeff Nolan and Marie Nolan to make quality affordable art and posters. Surrealistic subject matter and brain stimulating art is the basis of Palm Treat. Both Marie Nolan and Jeff Nolan use kaleidoscopic shapes and patterns with high contrast and highly saturated color pigment to produce Bart Simpson's face which is repetition of motifs for artistic inspiration.

Girl with Two Mouths vintage romance comic book inspired painting by Palm Treat.

Girl With Two Mouths Painting, Hot Pink Vintage Pop Art and Comic Book Retro Resurrection

Girl With Two Mouths painting by Palm Treat is a vintage comic book inspired pop art painting that uses neon hot pink, neon blue and beautiful, mysterious shapes. The painting is also available now in print form Palm Treat. Jeff Nolan and Marie Nolan create a stunning wall art piece that will recreate and decorate any house, design studio art, kids bedroom art, or office art.

If you're looking for a work of art for your office that is one of a kind Girl with Two Mouths is great. The artists Marie Nolan and Jeff Nolan aka Palm Treat are professional painters and illustrators who dominate the East coast pop are scene with eye catching original pop art for sale.

The theme of Girl with Two Mouths is nautical art, hipster art, vintage art poster, original vintage art, metro art, classic art, folk art, outsider art, and female art.

Click here to view more artwork like this beautiful trippy retro artwork.

Outsider artist Marie Williams of Palm Treat holding a cool skate deck.

Bart Simpson Skateboard by Palm Treat

Palm Treat is now part of the Thrasher community with skateboard decks made from 100% maple with high resolution and a hard enamel coated finish. Not your typical skate shop and skateboarding purchase! This affordable custom made skate deck is crazy, one of a kind, trippy and dope af.
Skateboarding culture and skater culture is defined by authentic decks that are made by incredible artists such as Palm Treat. This skate deck is not a going to be in a typical skate catalogue or online skate shop! It is only available though Palm Treat's website and is shipped to your door from their studio in Philadelphia. This skate deck by Palm Treat would look good as a wall piece or used to skate indoor and outdoor. This design has become an internet sensation and is a limited edition skate deck.

Check out more sweet skateboard designs here!

Outsider artist Marie Nolan of Palm Treat working on a pop art painting featuring the Simpsons.

Milhouse with Six Eyes Painting and Simpsons Shitposting Creator Geddy Lean Johnson

Simpsons Shitposting Facebook group has a new admin named Marie Nolan. Marie created affordable pop art for Simpsons fans all over the world. Jeff Nolan is the design partner and they go by the name Palm Treat. Simpsons Shitposing is a internet group that functions on the social media platform Facebook and has nearly 100k members. Simpsons Shitposting is loaded with gut wrenching memes and secret handshake humor that only Simpsons fans would understand. Also the group has fantastic sales on Palm Treat's wall art and posters that are only available to members of Simpson's Shitposting.

The creator of the group, Geddy Lean Johnson, has invented and maintained the group since he was the only member. He is NOT what you think a creator of such a group would be like. He's aka TEEN GIRL DIES AT RAVE, sound fimiliar? Geddy Lean Johnson has been dominating the west coast with his music career and public appearances. Palm Treat has teamed up with peer and fellow artist Geddy Lean Johnson to create a mecca for Simpsons Shitposting members. Geddy runs the facebook group Simpsons Shitposting with a no bullshit policy while blanketing the group with his own stoic, mysterious and cryptic dark humor.

This Simpsons painting is available through Simpsons Shitposting and Palmtreat as a print or as a painting.

View more cool trippy artwork

Milhouse With Six Eyes Takes Over The Internet and Social Media Platforms

Palm Treat has swept the internet with a Simpsons pop art painting, Milhouse With Six Eyes. The large colorful painting was then made into affordable hipster art prints that are available on their website along with many other prints.

It is now easy to find trippy far out hipster art prints and wall art because of the way Jeff Nolan and Marie Nolan vectorize the paintings. Milhouse With Six Eyes blew up over night and received astronomical re-blogs on the social media site Tumblr and dominated the google search for Milhouse. The painting is beautifully designed to let the viewer in on a trippy adventure Milhouse takes when LSD and psychedelic effects start to take a wild turn to the dark side.

Milhouse's third eye multiplies and horror sets in! Typical day for Milhouse, though!

View more cheap artwork for sale by Palm Treat

Palm Treat popular artists Jeff Nolan & Marie Nolan working on a pop art Simpsons painting.

Folk artist Marie Nolan & Jeff Nolan working on a painting.

Artwork in Progress and the Process of Painting Pop Art

Palm Treat has an excellent visual art making process which includes viewing Andy Warhol references, Art Forum Magazine, Art in America Magazine, Mad Magazine, Hi Fructose Magazine, Art Blend Magazine, and other successful Magazines that showcase solo art shows and well known illustrators and designers.

 Then the process moves to a brainstorming session where the two artists Marie Nolan and Jeff Nolan meet up and discuss pop art techniques and designs. The meeting is full of thumbnail sketches, napkin drawings, Simpson's references, vintage comic book layouts, historical influences and visually stimulating color schemes and shapes. The design process begins with a digital mock up and is followed by hours, sometimes days of editing to achieve compositional correctness.

Next, Jeff Nolan and Marie Nolan hand draw the image onto hand stretched canvas and begin to manipulate the digital mock up with effervescent bursts of organic lines and shapes. Nothing is set in stone, so there is room to edit and redraw areas and even change colors along the way. It's a fun process that both artists enjoy.

Finally, Jeff Nolan and Marie Nolan post photos of the paintings on social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, Tumblr, and Blogger. This ensures that Palm Treat fans and Simpsons fans can locate their online store.

Find more pop art by internet artists Palm Treat.

Palm Treat Display and Electronic Music Artist

Jeff Nolan and Marie Williams have created a visual mecca for the musician Michael Trillions. His Electronic music and unique sounds have been featured in movies and commercially. Palm Treat supplied his music studio with sweet prints that are available on our website Palmtreat.design along with many other Simpson's psychedelic art. Palm Treat has relocated to Philadelphia from Los Angeles and Detroit. Both Marie Nolan and Jeff Nolan met in Detroit Michigan.

Musician Michael Trillions is originally from Chicago and has made a home for himself in Philadelphia and Los Angeles as a musician and composer. The three of them are friends who collaborate artistically and continue to explore creative possibilities.

Palm Treat is inspired by Roy Lichtenstein and other famous artists, but strive on the idea that everyone should be able to afford wall art and popular pop culture prints and designs.

Palm Treat's pop art posters for sale in Michael Trillions Music Studio

Here are two 12x18" Simpsons pop art posters for sale by Palm Treat.

Homer With Sprinkles and Milhouse With Six Eyes by Palm Treat Artists Marie Nolan and Jeff Nolan

Palm Treat Art

There are many trippy pop art paintings and wall art posters in the world, but there is only one Palm Treat. We are elated to introduce a new aesthetic with colorful and bright pop art that can recreate any room in your home, office, or bedroom. The posters we print are highly saturated and polished with a gloss finish.

The Milhouse With Six Eyes and Homer With Sprinkles wall art posters are for sale on our website located at the bottom of this post. Brilliantly colored shapes and abstract patterns are an important element to our artwork. They use true Simpsons yellow and CMYK colors to create the best and brilliant art. Palm Treat's Marie Nolan and Jeff Nolan have become successful illustrators who are inspired by monoprints, abstract paintings, color blocking and dynamic design. They have built a career on their prominence in commercial art, web design, and art direction.

See more affordable art posters like this