Prins Nicolas

For me, art is about being able to convey the drama of someone who has been abandoned in this world and how they can survive in this splendour. Art, like life, lies in this tension between drama and splendour. This is why, when I make a painting –I do not strive to create a perfect anatomical copy....

For me, art is about being able to convey the drama of someone who has been abandoned in this world and how they can survive in this splendour. Art, like life, lies in this tension between drama and splendour. This is why, when I make a painting –I do not strive to create a perfect anatomical copy. What I transfer on paper or canvas is decomposing matter. It is the expression of an emotional mixture of anguish and joy. At the end of the day, it is not the task of an artist to speak clearly. Art to be art must vibrate.

Being a person of colour and mixed heritage, queer and immigrant I have no difficulty finding subjects for my paintings. In them, I see myself as a film director composing narratives from unrelated source materials creating an uncanny dramatic scene. There is an almost cinematic suspense to many of my paintings. A theatrical scene where something is going to happen or has just happened. The unique atmosphere of my compositions is built on source imagery, including archive photos, film stills or cartoons, whose mood I transfer to the canvas.