[1] During his senior year at North Texas State University he decided to become a painter,[1] but his progress was halting.
[3] Stout's works of the period 1947–1952 show the influence of European geometric painting, and typically feature multiple intersecting vertical and horizontal bands of color.
[3] In the autumn of that year his readings of Greek mythology, especially the tragedies of Sophocles and Aeschylus, inspired a new direction in his art.
[5] Working in black and white, usually on a small scale, he painted flat monolithic shapes which often resembled forks, shields, or lyres.
[7] His mature work has been described by Hilton Kramer as "a mode of abstraction small in scale, purist in form and intimate in feeling—an art utterly devoid of expressionist bravura and emotional display.