I walked through the door and was greeted by a maniac with a chainsaw warning me not to lose my head. Turning the corner, I came face-to-face with two massive creatures, eyes glowing, faces looking like they’re made of chewed-up bubble gum, grins stretching wide enough that you can practically hear the corners of their mouth creaking. Or was it the mechanisms making them move? The walls around you are lined with countless images of monsters, slashers, and other nightmares. You’d typically expect what I encountered to be the start of a haunted house and not an art gallery, but that’s not the type of experience you get when you step into the twisted and vibrant world of Alex Pardee. No, in Alex’s world, the snooty expectations of strolling a gallery are ripped away in bloody, ghoulish delight because in his work, it’s all about the horror.

As a longtime fan of Alex’s work, I couldn’t pass up the chance to explore his newest exhibit, Return of the Doppelgangers. Many of you may already be familiar with Alex’s art, and if you’re not, then it’s my pleasure to introduce you to it.

Alex Pardee has been crafting his unique brand of horrifying artwork for over 20 years. Using pens, watercolors, inks, and dyes, he brings to life everything from iconic horror villains like Freddy Krueger to his own terrifyingly original characters. His work, which he calls “Brightmares”, is unexpectedly vibrant—an explosion of saturated colors that somehow makes the horror even more unsettling.

As I wandered the gallery, I encountered a wide range of characters. From Gordy in Nope to deeper cuts like Psycho Goreman or Raatma from V/H/S/94 (Hail Raatma!). Every piece was packed with personality. I was also struck by some of his own unique characters, like a piece featuring two pink skulls melting together like some deleted scene from The Thing. They share eight eyes, bubbling flesh, and an impossible amount of teeth, some flying off into the air. He dubbed this guy “Pinky”.

Alex’s artistic journey began as a form of therapy when he was hospitalized at age 14. During that difficult time, drawing bizarre figures brought him a sense of comfort he couldn’t find in sports or other typical teenage interests. More times than not, this the art he made traced back to his love of horror, something that many of us gravitate to in times of trouble like a cozy blood stained blanket.

“For some reason, horror is very comforting to me”, Alex told me in our interview. “On a surface level, it’s most likely because I’m watching people in worse off situations than I’m in. Watching that brings me back to realizing like ‘calm down, things aren’t that bad. You’re not getting stabbed in the neck at the moment.’ It’s all about kind of like allowing me to realize how I feel in the moment versus simultaneously escaping into what these other people have created to help me forget that.”

This formative period inspired a lifelong love of horror, leading Alex to develop his signature style—a mix of hyper-detailed, colorful, and grotesque imagery. He traces his artistic roots to three key influences:

“It was probably about 1984, 1985.” he said. “I simultaneously in the same year saw Garbage Pail Kids, I saw Santa Cruz skateboard graphics, and my dad got me a couple reprints of Tales from the Crypt EC comics. Those three things, were basically the birth of everything that I loved after that. I loved horror, loved this hyper illustrated weird stuff, colorful, playful art, parody art, you know… those three things are still pretty consistent in everything that I do now.”

And things have just been growing from there. His work has been featured in Adam Green’s 2014 mockumentary Digging Up the Marrow, as well as films like This Is The End and Sucker Punch. He designed album covers for The Used and his own set of trading cards for TOPPS. Among his fans are filmmakers James Gunn, Edgar Wright, and Joe Lynch. He launched his own apparel company, House Pardee. He’s even got his own films in the works. 

When asked about how he approaches his work, Alex described his process as follows: “I just scribble and then I kind of start seeing things in those scribbles and start kind of formulating. I’m like, oh, like, this kind of looks like this thing’s ripping its head off to the left. And then that’s what I start drawing. And then it it turns in from something that might seem random into, like I start forming a story in my head. Sometimes that’s just the jumping point. And then I shove that aside and do something that springboards from that to be the finished piece. And then I just got messier and messier and then cleaned up the crime scene. And now you have a painting.”

His latest gallery, Return of The Doppelgangers, is full of the amazing things he found in the scribbles, and you can check out my full interview with Alex Pardee in the interview embedded at the top of this page. These works will also be featured in an upcoming art book set to release this spring. He is certainly one to keep several macabre eyes on, and if you want to check out his work, head on over to his website www.alexpardee.com or find him on Instagram

Here are some more photos from the event!

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