In Stout's art, serious themes with a jolly, retro feeling

“Stout’s instantly recognizable work employs series of recurring images, many depicted in the bulbous forms that pervaded underground comics in the 1960s and '70s. These images encompass oil derricks, fists grasping knives and guns, the state flag of Tennessee, old-fashioned bombs like the ones used in cartoons about anarchists, paper currency (lots of it), all the implements and impedimenta of contemporary life — telephones, radios, satellites and space stations, sports equipment and so on, rotating in chaotic orbit. In fact, Stout’s whole corpus displays a jolly retro feeling that only emphasizes the serious nature of his themes.” - Frederic Koeppel, The Commercial Appeal

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