Doug Groupp

About

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Doug Groupp, also known as Clown Soldier, is a Queens-born multidisciplinary artist whose practice spans painting, collage, screen printing, sculpture, and street art. Working across oil, acrylic, gouache, watercolor, frottage, and mixed media, Groupp moves fluidly between studio production and public interventions.

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Since 2009, he has been an active presence on the streets of New York City under the Clown Soldier moniker, introducing his now-iconic image of a clown dressed in a Revolutionary War–era soldier’s uniform. The figure plays on the tension between authority and absurdity, reflecting Groupp’s interest in humor, play, and contradiction. Through wheat-pastes, murals, and ad takeovers, his work embraces spontaneity and chance encounters, transforming urban spaces into sites of visual surprise and engagement.

Groupp’s practice balances the immediacy of street art with a layered, material-driven approach to image-making.