Midnite Rooms: The Art of Matthew Palladino
One might think it unlikely to find skeletons, grinning cat’s faces, vampires, and baby dolls chilling in a room together—noshing pizza with Simpsons-like characters flitting across the television. But in Matthew Palladino’s domain, anything goes. His watercolors are altogether playful, intimate, and sardonic: a motley of innocent bedtime stories, teenage angst, and grown-up horrors. When inklings of gloom do appear, they are usually contradicted by a layer of absurdity that says, “The world might be doomed, so we may as well let loose and be ourselves.”
Although irony and nostalgia seem like legitimate descriptors here, there remains something pure and unpretentious about Palladino’s work. He is less concerned with eliciting certain reactions from viewers, and more with satisfying his own inner curiosity through abstract investigations. From these lurid scenes, viewers may take what they wish.
The catalyst for Palladino’s eccentric imagination can be attributed to a stimulating upbringing. For starters, he grew up in San Francisco from the mid 1980s, amidst a vibrant art scene brimming with DIY culture. It was the time and place for conventionalities to be challenged, such as where and how art was presented to the public. As a teenager, Palladino sold his paintings on Haight Street. And certainly, the omnipresence of the psychedelic art scene seeped into his unconscious during those years. His parents were also avid art lovers who inevitably deepened his attraction to creative expression. “My father always supported local arts, theatre, and music, even circus acts, so we were always going to interesting cultural gatherings, meeting cool people. My mother was a great poet and visual artist and saw that I was drawn to visual art, drawing, and painting—and was very encouraging. Most of their friends seemed to be art types. It all just seemed natural to make art,” says Palladino.
INK AND WATERCOLOR ON PAPER IS UNFORGIVING, EVERY MOVEMENT IS PERMANENT, THERE’S NO PAINTING OVER, THERE IS NO SCRAPING OFF, SO YOU MUST HAVE PURE CONCENTRATION AND FAITH, WHICH TAKES YOU INTO SOME OTHERWORLDLY MIND SPACES.”
“THEN OF COURSE THE SURROUNDINGS OF THIS PLACE, THE ARID MOUNTAINS AND THE SKY, WHICH SEEMS VERY DRAMATIC AND CLOSE TO YOU, BECAME ANOTHER FRAME AROUND THE PLANTS.”
From early on, the energetic works of Stanley Mouse and Robert Crumb had wiggled their way into his periphery, followed by the likes of Margaret Kilgallen and Barry McGee, who were married until her untimely death, as well as fellow Mission School artist Chris Johanson. Thereafter, something had begun to crystalize. Yet once he discovered local artists of his age group doing exciting work—like Keegan McHargue and Tauba Aurbach—his own prospect as an artist came ringing into clear view.
It wasn’t until attending California College of the Arts, or CCA, that he stumbled upon what was to become a lifelong devotion to watercolor. “I fell in love with the experience of it, the act of painting using watercolors on paper, the bleeding flows, the reaction of the paper, the lush beauty of the brushes, the speed of the medium and its unforgiving-ness I found very alluring,” he says.
For some years, he plunged himself wholly into that medium, leading to exhibition opportunities at mixed-use spaces in San Francisco. These quickly garnered positive responses and art sales, prodding him to pursue art professionally. Eventually, with the city’s growing cost of living, he made a swift decision to move to Philadelphia, where one could afford an apartment and roll down garage studio by the sole act of making and selling art. “I think a very underrated thing for young artists is to keep your living expenses at a minimum when you’re starting out, so you can try doing the full-time art thing without too much risk,” he says.
Fast forward to the beginning of the COVID pandemic: Palladino had moved to La Paz, Bolivia—a gorgeous new environment met under unusual circumstances. Being locked indoors gave the artist time to reflect upon distant childhood memories, and the bygone living spaces which shaped them so profoundly. From these ruminations, his narrative “room” paintings began to emerge. “’Natasha’s Room’ was one of the first ones—it’s based on the bedroom of a girl who lived in the apartment above me when I was growing up in San Francisco. I was around nine or ten and she was probably thirteen or fourteen, and I used to go up to her place to play her Super Nintendo. I think there was something about seeing the room of a pubescent girl through the eyes of a prepubescent boy. There were things I didn’t understand, and maybe interested me in strange ways,” he says. “She was at an age where she still had stuffed animals but also was interested in boys and maybe starting to experiment with smoking, or illicit substances, drinking—things I was too young to understand. It made for a sort of exciting and inappropriate mix, like still wholesome but maybe some darkness around the corner lurking—the end of innocence.”
“I FELL IN LOVE WITH THE EXPERIENCE OF IT, THE ACT OF PAINTING USING WATERCOLORS ON PAPER, THE BLEEDING FLOWS, THE REACTION OF THE PAPER, THE LUSH BEAUTY OF THE BRUSHES, THE SPEED OF THE MEDIUM AND ITS UNFORGIVING-NESS I FOUND VERY ALLURING.”
His unusual compositions tend to disobey laws of time and space. Considering that they arise from the murmurs of random recollection, these images follow a hypnagogic logic instead. Dissociative, yet tangible enough to discern the setting. We might get a sense of foreground, but beyond that plain, details are permitted to fill the voids of memory however they wish—banjos hover in midair, monkeys climb invisible obstacles, and paintings dangle on nonexistent walls. From this chaos, a satisfying performance emerges. He explains: “The whole thing is similar to a choreographed dance, or like performing a piece of music from a composition. All the playing around is in the early stage of sketching and composition. I’ll try dozens of different things in that nascent phase. But once it’s choreographed, it’s time for the execution, for the performance, which you only have one shot at. Ink and watercolor on paper is unforgiving, every movement is permanent, there’s no painting over, there is no scraping off, so you must have pure concentration and faith, which takes you into some otherworldly mind spaces. Like making a mandala from sand or something. It’s a very different process than painting in any traditional sense. But it can be exhausting.”
Contrasting Palladino’s bedroom scenes are his distinct botanical portraits, which are acutely textured, yet simultaneously soft and dreamy, all in his characteristic whimsy-psych style. These paintings exalt varieties of the cacti family, their fleshy folds rippling out in hallucinogenic splendor. Palladino and his wife have lived in La Paz for the past five years. Part of the Andes mountain range and the highest capital city in the world, they’ve existed among the incredible abundance of cacti and succulent plants that thrive there. The San Pedro plant—native to the Andes—grows through “cresting,” a response to mutations, infections, or damage that creates a brain-like growth pattern. This plant has become a muse for Palladino. Of this odd and mesmerizing story of growth, he shares, “I began playing at ‘growing,’ or designing, my own versions, and they began to take on an almost spiritual feel, like meeting an old forgotten god, something ancient and wise and mysterious. Then of course the surroundings of this place, the arid mountains, and the sky—which seems very dramatic and close to you— became another frame around the plants.”
Palladino’s creativity doesn’t end there, as many of his ideas make their way into the material realm as tactile wall reliefs, through resin or hand painted 3-D prints. These might include elements similarly found in his paintings—things like funny felines, rainbow ribbons, and candy-like florals.
When asked where his fascinations will possibly land next, he states, “I hope to explore painting with dye on fabric this year. As my partner is an expert in textiles, we will probably do some collaborations. I also hope to revisit 3-D wall reliefs that I’ve done a lot of work on, so keep an eye out for that.”
Whatever the medium, his fervor for all of life’s quirks springs out at us, enthusing cooperative eyes.*
This article originally appeared in Hi-Fructose issue 74. You can still get a copy of it here. Or subscribe today for our latest issue here.
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