Artist 10: Alex Pardee

Alex Pardee is an illustrator and apparel designer who combines his sense of humor and knack for distorting proportions to create some truly twisted works of art. To accomplish his pieces, he typically works in pen and watercolor. According to an interview with Slamxhype, his inspirations range from his own battles with depression and anxiety all the way to contemporary pop culture While some of his works make statements in response to current political events, many others are simply for the "fun" of it. Visually, his work is embodied by twisted, grotesque figures drenched in low-saturation watercolor.

Ultimately, I find Pardee's work inspirational because he combines elements that I find in my own work but he arranges them in a completely different yet compelling way. By this, I mean his deliberate distortion of the human figure to elicit emotional response is a lot of what I aim to do with my own figural work. In effect, Pardee creates representations of humans that one may easily identify with on some level. At the same time, however, his distortion alienates the viewer as well. The final result is a sort of mixed emotional response. Overall, I find his aesthetic to be incredibly compelling.

His website may be found here.