Art is the world’s common entity that inspires the human perspective, and designs the evolution of society. The elements of design are used by millions of artists to truly create an artwork that invokes emotions, thoughts, and mindset to the world; even in the common man. The creative process of the artist is inspired by mind, society, and the influence of everyday life. Alex Pardee’s painting, Goodnight, Lava, purely and accurately portrays the creative process, principals of design, and the human mind displayed on a canvas.

An artist must evoke emotion from the viewer to have his/her artwork truly be a work of art. The only way an artist can truly do this is have inspiration worked into the piece. Pardee’s Goodnight, Lava has a perfect example of a thought provoking, heart string tugging story. Pardee states that when he was young he had about ten dead rabbits. One day Pardee’s father walks into his room and explains that Cinnamon, one of the rabbits, has passed on. Pardee laughs out loud as he thinks to himself “what a weird joke to play on me.” As it turns out his father was not joking. Cinnamon was dead. Pardee realizes that he had never picked up and held Cinnamon in his entire life because he was scared. He immediately picked up each of his rabbits and held them for some time “imaging them as unicorns”. (Pardee October 25, 2011)

Pardee may have imagined, and later depicted in his painting, his rabbits as unicorns because he stated that he was scared to hold them. Unicorns are mystical, friendly and imaginative so why not envision something you are scared of as such a beautiful creature. Goodnight, Lava also shows that the creature holding the rabbit, that Pardee claims to be inspired by himself, is far from human. This beast has arms jetting out of the sides of his head, to black eyes, and an almost mystical form of a body supporting his vastly over grown head. Pardee may have chose to display himself as such a monster to portray how he felt about himself at the moment. A rabbit of his very own has just died and not once did he hold it, what a monster he must have felt like. If art has no inspiration, no soul, no deep meaning or message for the world, how can one possibly expect a viewer to look at the work for more than a few moments? If art is to be great then it must come from the heart as well as display the elements and principals of design.