Tell Stephen Gamson that his work makes you think of a public bathroom and you'll be paying him the highest compliment.

Because it was upon entering a restroom in a Russian airport several years ago that South Florida's newest pop-art sensation had an epiphany about one of those things that unites the people of the world: the universal symbols displayed on bathroom doors and stalls.

``People say that music unites us,'' Gamson says. ``There's something else, bathrooms. Seriously. Anywhere you go on Earth, even if you can't speak the language, if you can find the doors with those little symbols -- the man and the woman -- you know you've found the bathroom, that place of relief. I found beauty in that simplicity.''

Eight years later Gamson has perfected a niche, friends and critics alike say, with paintings and sculptures depicting the universal symbol couple partaking in any number of activities, including playing polo, sun bathing, dining at a sidewalk cafe or chatting over drinks at an upscale bar.

His work, produced in his high-rise loft in downtown Miami, is increasingly visible and in demand.

He painted the logos for the international Bustelo Coffee chain, and his prints are mounted in the Bustelo Cafe inside the Gansevoort Hotel in Miami Beach.

His mural At the table with a flower, of two couples dining, graces the side of the Wynwood Art Complex near Midtown Miami, and he's painting bottle art for Select Vodka.

And look for Gamson during Art Basel-Miami Beach next month, showing his work at Art Miami and tooling about town in a Lamborghini he was commissioned to paint for the festival by Lamborghini of North America and Lamborghini Miami.

Deborah Jofre, a Miami attorney and art collector, recalls the first time she saw a Gamson piece.

``I didn't like it. I remember thinking, `Is this guy just going to be another Britto?' '' she says, referring to Miami's resident pop-art king Romero Britto.

But Jofre says the more she studied Gamson's work, ``the more feeling and unique quality I found to it. It took me a while to actually buy some of Stephen's work. But I plan to buy more.''

Gamson, 44, arrived in South Florida in the early 1990s from Atlanta. He was a fledgling artist, making money by selling and trading pieces in an extensive art collection he'd started amassing when he was 17.

``Some kids bought new clothes or new cars, I bought paintings,'' he says.

His appreciation for art stemmed from his family's business in Orlando -- a ``green recycling center,'' a k a a junk yard. ``I was fascinated with the artists in town who would come by our facility looking for things to use in a new work of art,'' he says. ``I always thought it was great how they took other people's cast-offs and made something special and thoughtful with it.''

Violeta De La Serna, a bi-coastal -- Miami and Los Angeles -- artist and art dealer who now works with Gamson, recalls his arrival in South Florida. ``Stephen definitely didn't feel the need to impress, in that immature way. His style and personality were, are, simple and confident. And you could tell he was biding his time,'' De La Serna says. ``He's definitely not stereotypical.''

A few well-placed handshakes and smiles at artist parties got him an introduction to Britto, and by the summer of 1995 Gamson was director of operations in Britto's Miami studio, helping develop aluminum sculptures.

It was in 2001, while in the Russian airport's bathroom, where he got the idea to incorporate universal symbols in his art.

He spent the next few years developing the style. His biggest break came in 2007 when Seth Jason Beitler of Seth Jason Beitler Fine Arts, who had been following Gamson for several years, asked the artist to show his work along with sculptures by John Henry, during Art Basel. Beitler, already a force in South Florida's arts scene, contacted Gamson and offered to represent him.

On a recent Wednesday evening, working in the 63rd-floor downtown Miami loft provided by Miami real estate broker and arts patron Andres Asion for use as studio work space, Gamson paints sweeping white brush strokes on a large canvas.

Nearby lay a drawing of what the canvas would eventually bear: a woman on one knee smelling a flower and surrounded by other flowers. A visiting friend gives a puzzled look.

``You expect something fancy?'' he coyly asks.

That self-deprecation is what sets Gamson apart from some of his more egotistic peers, says Beitler.

``I've known lots of artists and worked with countless numbers. Stephen is all heart, not at all self-consumed. He loves the reaction, the smiles to what he does,'' Beitler says.

Gamson doesn't seem swayed by the hype.

``I'm a guy who paints pictures -- pretty pictures that I think are pretty damned good. Look at the people I paint. They're simple figures, silhouettes. But that's all. That's not fancy . . . It's happy art. And that's a good thing.''