Nick Pedersen

Nick Pedersen is a photo-based digital artist and illustrator whose work primarily focuses on nature and environmental issues. He holds a BFA degree in Photography, as well as an MFA degree in Digital Arts from Pratt Institute in New York. He has shown artwork in galleries across the country and internationally, recently including the Los Angeles Center for Digital Art, Paradigm Gallery, and Arch Enemy Arts. He has published two artist books featuring his long-term personal projects Sumeru and Ultima. Many of his images have been recognized with awards from the International Photography Awards, the Fine Art Photography Awards, the Adobe Design Achievement Awards, and the Photoshop Guru Award. He has worked on commercial projects for companies like Adobe, Patagonia, the Nature Conservancy, and for various non-profits and commissions. His work has been featured in publications such as Vogue, Create Magazine, Juxtapoz, Hi-Fructose, and on the covers of Photoshop User and After Capture. In the past few years he has also completed artist residencies at the Banff Center in Canada, the Gullkistan Residency in Iceland, and the Starry Night Retreat in New Mexico. This upcoming fall he will begin a yearlong fellowship at the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art (UMOCA).

Artist Statement

“My artwork is primarily inspired by my experience with nature and environmentalism. It is specifically motivated by my concern for the future due to the effects of climate change, pollution, deforestation and many other environmental impacts humans have had on the planet. My goal with these projects is to visually depict this modern conflict between the natural world and the manmade world in interesting and provocative ways, to create elaborate, photorealistic images that show a striking contrast between utopian and dystopian visions of the world. I portray this as an epic struggle and in my work these forces clash in theatrical, post-apocalyptic battlegrounds.”