Since 2003, when the first Danko Gorilla Stickers rolled off the press, I’ve been sharing them with people I meet and leaving them in locations all around the world. Initially created as just a way to spread my art, they eventually began taking on a life of their own. I’d see them in places I knew I hadn’t been, and meet people who would tell me places they had seen the sticker before. In late 2009 I decided the “dissemination of the gorilla” could be something interesting to document and began a gallery on flickr to catalogue photos of places “The Orange Gorilla” has been around the world.

Yeah But Why a Gorilla?

Yeah But Why a Gorilla?

The image on the sticker is a homage to the very first painting I ever did (c1996) of a grouping of primates – an ape, an orangutan, and a gorilla. It was the piece that unexpectedly began my love affair with painting. Throughout my first couple years of college painting was a medium that I was intimidated by and the class was something I kept putting off. Eventually there came a point though when I couldn’t put off taking the class any longer and found myself under the tutelage Professor Ron Weaver. With our first blank canvas Ron told us to go ahead and paint whatever we wanted. At the time I remember thinking, “Holy s#$%. I don’t know how to paint anything. Where the hell do I start?”

That afternoon I walked home with the blank canvas contemplating what I was going to compose on it, eventually deciding on the primate collage. Their human-esque qualities, particularly gorillas, had been something that fascinated me ever since I was a little kid. The next day I commandeered a few reference books from the library and penciled in a rough composition. Afterwards I decided on colors, mixed them and began attacking the canvas. To this day the memory of those first strokes seems surreally etched in my mind. I can remember applying hues of shadowy paint to the brow of the gorilla, and for some reason everything in that moment seemed to make sense to me. To slow down. I didn’t have to think about it. I could just do it. It was at that moment that my love affair with painting began.

When the painting was finished I was ecstatic. I had no delusions that I had created any great work of art, but during this first attempt at painting I knew I had unearthed something meaningful within myself. I felt like I could paint anything. What I mean by that is that when I paint, the subject matter becomes secondary and I instead break it down in my mind as colors, next to colors, next colors. When those blotches of color build up next to, and on top of one another, the vision in my mind begins to take shape and come to life.

Ever since that first ‘gorilla’ piece I knew I wanted to be a painter. Painting is one of the few things in life that makes my mind go blank, gives pause to the traffic jam of thoughts and questions within, and lets solitude find its way to me. When the time came where I was ready to begin sharing my art in a more public realm, I wanted to design a meaningful symbol to represent myself. I thought back to that first piece and knew it was a gorilla that would tell my story. If you look at the sticker a slew of words encircle the gorilla: write, begin, travel, destroy, etc. Of all the words the most meaningful ones to me are ‘face your gorilla’. That first painting class was my ‘gorilla’, the monkey on my back that I didn’t want to face. When I finally did I discovered something within that I didn’t know was there. Today, when I am confronted by some self-limiting fear, it is the gorilla that I try to remember, and The Orange Gorilla that I try to spread.

How can you get your own Orange Gorilla Stickers?

Gorilla

Easy. Just send an email to me at jimmy@jimmydanko.com with an address and I’ll send some out your way.

Danko Gorilla Stickers are printed by Sticker Guy. Big props to the crew over there for always doing a kickass job on The Gorilla.