Paul Reardon is a UK-based designer, director, and visual artist working at the crossroads of digital art, design, film, and technology. He is the founder of Altered State Editions, a creative space for producing limited-edition digital art prints through experimentation and play.

Born and raised in Sheffield, Paul’s work reflects the contrast of industrial and natural landscapes that shaped his upbringing — raw materials, industrial sounds, and the vast beauty of the nearby Peak District. Inspired by nature documentaries, space, and the surreal, Paul’s recent creations blend elements of plants and insects into hyper-surreal, otherworldly forms. Influenced by Surrealism and Dadaism, his work thrives on unexpected collisions of ideas, creating the strange and the extraordinary.

We asked Paul about his art, creative process, and inspirations.

Digital Artist Interview Paul Reardon Digital Arts Blog — *Altered State Editions*

Can you tell us about your background as a digital artist? How did you get started in this field?

I’m not sure I could fully claim to be a digital artist outright as my career path has been much more varied. I started working as a Graphic Designer for two agencies back in 1999, before co-founding Peter and Paul in 2005. Over the last 26 years I have worked in animation, film, and more recently, immersive technology. Most of this work has been through creative direction as opposed to creating the art myself.

I’ve always made images in some form or another, through my own photography & photo-illustration. Particularly in the early days of my former company, we did a lot of work for friends in music and small independent labels. We designed many record sleeves where the budgets were often low. Out of necessity we made the images ourselves often using very lo-fi analogue processes. Our focus then was to create great ideas and visualise them in whatever means we had at our disposal, photo-copiers and fax machines were as much tools as the macs we were using at the time. In some sense that attitude and approach to making images and art has always stayed with me in what I make today.

What inspires your art? Are there any particular themes or subjects that you enjoy exploring through your artwork?

I was born and raised in Sheffield. A post industrial city in a village called Handsworth (home of Sean Bean for any Game of Thrones fans). The city and surrounding countryside is very green. The village I grew up in was next to a coal mining pit and close to steelworks. This gives you both the contrast of raw industrialisation of the natural landscape, pulling materials out of the ground, with the unbelievable vast beauty of the Peak district's natural landscape. I think there's always been a raw aesthetic in what I do that resonates from this. Raw materials from the earth, industrial sounds that resonate around the hills of the city, surrounded by nature, have definitely influenced my work in some sub conscious way.

I'm obsessed with nature documentaries and space. I love the weird other worldliness of plants, insects, micro organisms and deep sea creatures. I’m naturally drawn to observing and thinking about life on micro and macro scales and how it all interconnects. Some of my recent images are like collisions and mutations of plants and insects, neither one or the other but some kind of hyper surreal version of the two. I like ideas in Surrealism and Dadaism, ideas that pull seemingly abstract or disconnected thoughts together to create something new, weird or absurd.

What are some of your favorite projects or accomplishments, and why do they stand out to you?

I think the one that really stands out is PoliNations. Produced whilst at my previous company Peter & Paul in collaboration with the live arts events company, Trigger. The project was an Augmented Reality experience that translated your thoughts and feelings about identity into a digital flower, unique to you, that you could grow in a virtual super garden. It's an idea that, from the outset, we didn’t even know if it was possible to achieve in the way we wanted to make it work, with real context and meaning. For the design of the flowers I worked in collaboration with 3D artist Manuel Camino, developing a series of interchangeable connecting parts of flowers, from the stem to the sepal, petals, stigma and anther. Using form, colour texture and movement we designed a whole series for each component that was inspired by different aspects of plants and nature that could be assigned to one of six emotional states: Fear, Sadness, Anger, Love, Joy and Surprise. There were 847,000 possible combinations. It sounds quite mathematical, and parts of it were, but it had a very poetic sensibility to it. The research involved and dialogue I had between Angie Bual (Trigger) and many others, elevated my whole understanding and appreciation for the natural world. The project had so much richness and depth to every part of it.

Another memorable project was a cinematic ident I directed for Warp Films in collaboration with the brilliant XK Studio. Since the age of 5, I’ve always been a massive film fan, so to create an ident for the big screen, and for a Sheffield based film company, was a pretty special thing for me. After many variations of the identity were developed, there was one idea that seemed to resonate with Warp's philosophy of always looking for the narrative fault line. Like a fault line that runs through tectonic plates, it displaces and distorts the earth's fabric, as does a narrative fault line within a Warp film. Usually through the lead protagonist, altering the discourse and the path of the story. This led to creating the fractured imperfect logo, and out of this developed the cinematic ident where the fractured earth splits apart, bubbling bluish purple rock splinters and breaks apart to reveal the logo. There’s subtle connections here to the local landscape, Blue John was a direct reference, a bluish purple mineral unique to the Peak District.

There are many record sleeves I've produced in the past. One in particular I designed with my friend and artist, Mike Hughes, for his album Black Gold. Photographed with my friend and long time collaborator Perou, Mike was repeatedly submerged in a bathtub of 40 gallons of molasses, for about 3 hours! It was not fun for him to be drowned in freezing cold sugary horse food but we got some amazing iconic shots.

In relation to my own visual art another collaboration I did recently with Perou for Frantic Assembly’s Kafka’s Metamorphosis play written by Lemn Sissay was probably the project that inspired me to want to create more visual art for myself that led to the beginning of Altered State Editions.

Can you share more about your limited series of digital art prints, Altered State Editions?

Altered State evolved through a desire to create art outside of commissioned work that I just wanted to make for the purposes of experimentation and play. I couldn’t really find a platform that was right to put the work out on so I started my own. It’s simply a continual process of experimentation to make images. The name was inspired by the art in the sense that they are very much a distortion of reality. I’m making more images in the second series that are a continuation of these (un)natural mutations. I really just make the art for myself. It’s not the most accessible so when people buy my prints to hang in their homes I do consider it very humbling that they’ve gone out on a limb to put something weird I made on their wall. Next year I'll be expanding this series and hoping to find potential shows and gallery representation.

The world of digital art and technology is always evolving. How do you stay inspired and adapt to new trends or advancements in the field?

That’s a tough one to answer. I don’t think I do, consciously anyway. I’m surrounded by people that are much more up to date and invested in technology than me. I’m naturally curious about what certain technologies can do, but fundamentally I need an idea to drive something that then determines what a technological solution might be. I do really like the idea of learning Touch Designer for example, something i’ve never used because I like the idea of playing with the interaction of visual, sound and movement, but i’ll let that permeate in the back of my mind until I have an idea that requires those interactions and tools to make it. I think if you approach work through the lens of appropriating trends of technology, the technology itself becomes the determiner of your artistic output, not a means to express what is in your imagination.

What is a fun fact about you?

Oh no! Not that one! I wouldn’t say fun at all but it is interesting to me. One of my ancestors is a guy called Ebenezer Elliott (my great grandmother's maiden name). He was known as a corn law rhymer who was an activist and wrote poetry about the repeal of the corn laws. His political ideas went on to create the foundation of the Labour Party.

What else fills your time when you’re not creating art?

Every aspect of what I do in my career through art, design, film, immersive technology is connected to life outside work whether i’m making it, watching it, seeing it or reading it.

I don’t really switch off or see the distinction between the two things. I see art as just an observation of lived experiences, it’s always present in how you see the world as either a blessing or a curse.

What is a dream project you’d like to make one day?

Hopefully if the moons align I will be doing two next year. All I can say right now is one is film based and the other a product. I would however like to make some kind of god game with my mutated insects that is generative, part game and part existential natural world documentary. If there are any computer scientists and game developers out there that appeals too please feel free to get in touch!

Follow Paul’s work: