These conventions are in the service of an unconventional mind.
Art plays our minds.
It strikes chords that resonate in our senses and memories. Though a smile, even a laugh, may be imbedded in many of Stout's works, the chord his art strikes often contains, as an essential and identifying ingredient, a deep empathy for the individual personage he has created. He is able to invent faces that speak movingly of complex histories. The ability to convey emotion through an individual depicted in a painting is one most modernist painters would find of little use. The presence of a figure with a layered personality in a Cezanne or Matisse would surely distract from the formal intent of the work.