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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. 

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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. 

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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. 

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There’s no landscape in the world I find more interesting than just looking into a humans eyes