Artist of the Week: Matthew Palladino

"Matthew Palladino is 22 years old. He was born and raised in San Francisco. He enrolled then dropped out of CCA. He loves the City where he was born."



"Matthew Palladino’s paintings allude to influences by early Mission School artists; colorful, flat, almost folky. From there his work diverges. His subject matter is raw, sexual, and violent; inspired by current media events and the rough edges of society. His shockingly honest portraits of American life expose all-too-real events in his ongoing narrative that tie his current works together." - park life



"Citing influences including Jim Jones, the tiger that escaped from the SF zoo earlier this year and the Mission School, 22 year-old artist Matthew Palladino's paintings are, to say the least, bizarre. Primarily working on watercolor paper, images of gang members, drug dens and bleeding bodies are rendered in simplified shapes with rich, saturated colors.



The faux-naive allusions are many — Darger, , Dzama, Clare Rojas, Chris Johanson, among others — but the SF-native's honesty shines through in his meticulous detail and the freely-associated subjects. And his sense of composition likely has to do with a stint at the California College of Art." - cool hunting

Matthew Palladino's work completely blows me away. I discovered him during my daily read a few months back @ Cool Hunting. He's quickly becoming one of my favorite new artists.