Interview & photography: Brooke Rutner
In anticipation of his upcoming exhibition, we grabbed a sneak-peak of Nick’s production process. The walls of his sun-soaked mile-ex studio are stacked with large wood panels.
“I’ve spent more time the local hardware store than any art supplies store”, Nick laughs. Finding the 2D nature of flat-surface painting to be limiting, Nick began combining elements learned from his short stint in carpentry school. This led to Nick’s signature 3D approach to image-making.
Where are you from? How does this influence you?
I’m from a tiny town called Baldwin’s Mills in south east Québec. I think coming from such a quiet place influenced me a lot.. there wasn’t much activities or friends there.. so I spent a lot of my time by myself and I think my creativity had to flourish to keep life interesting…I spent all my time drawing or building stuff in the forest.
You have a very unique practice, combining painting with woodworking as well a sculpture. How did you arrive at this method?
My method happened organically, through experimentation. I was pursuing different interest and studied graphic design, then I did woodworking .. then somehow when I was painting , I ended up painting on wood...then eventually I thought to myself « maybe I could shape this differently.. » and it just kinda evolved to where it is now.
Common elements in your work are scale and portraiture, are there premeditated reason for this? My dad used to work with large maps and I would always use the ones he didn’t need anymore to make gigantic drawings and paintings because I liked it more than on normal sized paper...So I guess the large scale has just always had an appeal to me.
I think faces are just the most interesting thing in the world. There’s no landscape in the world I find more interesting than just looking into a humans eyes, listening to the words coming from someone’s lips. The soul is in the eyes, so I feel there’s nothing I’d rather try and capture.
Is your work guided by a theme or larger concept? To me I don’t think art always needs a goal or a deeper meaning, you can create for the sake of creating. Adding beauty to the world.