Biography of Thaddeus Strode
The unique style of Los Angeles-based Thaddeus Strode fuses elements from the skateboard and punk rock culture of his youth with imagery inspired by horror films and comic books in a cryptic cacophony of vibrant colors and styles. Strode is fearless in his vivid arrangements of disparate motifs, pairing garden gnomes and prison convicts, and imagining trees growing out of a macabre pile of skulls.
Ranging from the enigmatic to the nightmarish, Thaddeus Strode's works reveal his penchant for the supernatural, populated with all manner of monsters and phantoms, the stuff of a teenage boy’s dreams. The artist's multifaceted repertoire covers paintings, graphics, prints, and mixed media, all of which are deeply rooted in mass media, cartoons, and rock music, all rendered in bold color combinations.
Born in 1964 in Santa Monica, USA, Thaddeus Strode has had numerous solo exhibitions, notably Ghosts Adrift at the Kunstverein Heilbronn in 2000 and Absolutes and Nothings at the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, St. Louis in 2008. He has had important group shows include Sympathy for the Devil: Art and Rock and Roll Since 1967 at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, and Funny Cuts: Cartoons and Comics in Contemporary Art at the Staatsgalerie in Stuttgart.
