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3DTotal: Hi Nykolai – thanks for this interview. I’ve been chatting to you for a while now about your work and your influences and such, so could you just introduce yourself for those readers who are not yet familiar with you or your work?
Nykolai: My pleasure! Okay, what can I say … I could ramble on about where I was born, my childhood, or how I got into art (pens and a piece of paper are generally a good start!), but I don’t really want to condense three decades of my life into a couple of paragraphs, to tell you the truth. Besides, it doesn’t really define who I am or what I do.
Originally from Germany, I moved to England in the late nineties – first London, then Scarborough – and am currently in South Africa, though planning to return to the U.K. at the end of the year. I’m a coffeeholic, work best at night, and love pasta and wine gums (not together, mind you). The name “Nykolai Aleksander” is a pseudonym that I’ve been using since I started showing my work in early 2002, and I’ve grown used to being mistaken for either being Russian, or a guy, or both. I don’t like disclosing my real name, but if I did, people no doubt would start asking if I am related to the creator of The Simpsons, as I happen to share his last name. Just my luck! [Laughs]
Painting was a hobby for me until a few years ago; first when the fine art gallery Washington Green asked me to come on board with my oil paintings (an offer that subsequently disintegrated for various reasons), and then when Paul Hellard from Ballistic Publishing asked me to submit three of my works for the book Exotique 2. Magazine and more book exposure followed, and now painting is a full-time job, albeit one I never actively sought. I wouldn’t want it to be any different, though. I’d feel rather lost without it.
My inspiration lies mostly with personal experiences and stories, history, books, thoughts and moods. Music inspires me greatly. Without music, I don’t think I would be painting at all.
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3DTotal: So where were you showing your artwork for the likes of Washington Green and Ballistic Publishing to see it and contact you? Was it one of the well-known art community sites? I think many artists reading this would be thrilled to be contacted by Ballistic, so how did Paul Hellard find you…?
Nykolai: I had my work on my website, as well as on deviantART. A representative of Washington Green found me on deviantART. Where Paul Hellard saw my work I don’t know, as he never mentioned it. He just told me he had seen my work and would like me to submit three specific paintings. To be honest, I was quite taken aback to be contacted by him, as I’d never considered being good enough to even try and submit to any of the Ballistic books. You know, when you see the work that is featured in their annuals, you’re just blown away! So yeah, it was a shock.
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3DTotal: I actually first heard about you through Justin Lassen, who emailed me to tell me about this fantastic artist who was painting a piece for him. Now, for those who know Justin they’ll know about his Synaesthesia projects. You once explained the term “Synaesthesia” to me so beautifully, so could you also tell our readers about this condition and how it plays a part in your own artwork?
Nykolai: Well, Synaethesia is a medical condition where two senses are inexplicably linked. The most common form seems to be the one where people see different words or numbers in different colors, even though it’s strictly speaking not two senses.
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Others taste or smell things when they hear completely unrelated words. Again, others see colors when they hear music. I am not sure if this also works the other way round, but that is essentially what Justin is referring to with “Synaesthesia”: hearing music when you see colors and shapes.
I have never been diagnosed with Synaethesia, but I may as well have been, as for me music instantly creates colors in my mind that turn into scenes; different types of music bring different color schemes. Scenes change and pictures start to form, usually in motion, like my own personal video clip. It’s like a sort of MTV on acid without the danger of an overdose, though I must admit at times my mind gets rather frizzled out. I usually listen to the same music over and over while working on a piece, or else what I see in my mind loses itself in something completely different.
3DTotal: I love the whole concept of seeing images form from music – amazing! I trained as an artist myself and yet I have never been able to see pictures form from music in my mind, quite as you have described in this way, and so I find this a truly amazing “gift” to have been blessed with! Can you briefly try and talk us through the motions you go through when painting an image from an inspirational piece of music?
Nykolai: I can try, though I won’t take any responsibility if it sounds a bit insane…
Usually it starts with one piece of music that captures me for whatever reason – normally, these are orchestral or otherwise instrumental tracks. I instantly see things in my mind whenever I listen to music, but
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some pieces are better than others to do that to me. It’s an emotional response, really, just experienced in a different way than others would experience it. Different sounds give me different colors, and then images. I’m pretty sure everyone knows what it’s like to hear a certain type of music and then associate it with a place, and the atmosphere and general appearance of that place, or its people. That would be the initial stage, and I work from there. Most of the time I see figures occupying that space the music creates, and they take on more form the longer I listen to the same track or set of tracks. It’s like a journey through sound. At some point I start to single out which figure I may want to paint, let them roam about a bit longer in my head, then freeze-frame them, in a way. Then I start with the sketch, choose the colors the music dictates, and take it from there.
To give you some examples, the “Samurai Templar“ image is linked to the soundtrack of The Last Samurai (no big surprise there); “Lucifer” with The Passion of the Christ (yes, indeed…), “Phoenix” to certain tracks from Epicon by Globus, as well as some |
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Rammstein songs, and so on.
Then again, maybe I’m presuming that everyone understands this, because to me it’s an everyday thing?
3DTotal: OK, so looking at your portfolio (http://www.admemento.com), your work is primarily character based; realistic painterly characters, alone in their painted backgrounds. What is it about people/characters that inspire you so greatly, and why is it that you tend to paint them as single characters with limited props, rather than in scenes?
Nykolai: To me, there is nothing more beautiful than the human face, and the expression of eyes. The face of a person is like a canvas, and their eyes spill their stories onto it. Everything else is secondary. You don’t need to dress them in extravagant clothes and set them into a palace to show their power or greed or vanity; you don’t need to make their surroundings pink and fluffy or very dark to show love and compassion or heartbreak and evil. Unnecessary props and surroundings just take the viewer’s focus away from what really counts – in my eyes. Of course, elaborate character scenes with lots of props are beautiful (or horrifying) to look at, but I often get lost in them in a way I don’t like to get lost in images, just like many artists seem to get lost in painting them. To me, they often lack something – something that draws me in other than the myriad of things to see. When your intention is to show a place, or different world, rather than characters and their inner workings, that’s a different story. However, that is generally not my world.
I could also say that faces sometimes are like music to me – it is rare that they sing to me, but when they do, their melody is one that lingers. It stays with me long after a painting is finished. So I really have no need for props when the essence is right there.
3DTotal: You have a very poetic and beautiful way of describing things which also shows through in your work. You are obviously a very emotional and thoughtful person! This makes me wonder: if you were to paint a portrait of yourself, right here and now – today, then what would you show in the eyes of the portrait and what kind of mood would be portrayed in the piece?
Nykolai: Oooh, dangerous question! [Laughs] I’m not used to stripping off in public! Distance would be the general mood. Mischievous and alert, cautious, but not un-welcoming, with a hint that there is far more to discover than is visible at first sight, if only you dared come closer…
3DTotal: You once mentioned to me that you paint every image at an amazingly high resolution to enable them print-ready at the largest possible size. Can you just tell us a little about the advantages of painting at such a high resolution? Does it ever have its downsides?
Nykolai: Yes – 300dpi and usually anything above 12,000 pixels. I’m not sure there is an advantage other than extremely large prints; maybe that you can be a bit lazy on the details and general refinement, yet it still looks very detailed and precise when printed or shown online. Nothing ever gets printed at its original size; usually the print size is 24% of the original size when working at 300dpi. Of course, you can also go into insane detail, almost painting pixel by pixel, and thus get a picture that is almost better than photo quality. I have done both.
The downside is, if you don’t have a dedicated computer, you can forget it! Photoshop starts to lag, certain commands cannot be executed due to too little memory, and so on. My current machine has been very good to me over the past few years, but I also have to be very good in return: I tend to move not needed files to my external hard drive, to give Photoshop as much memory as possible to work with. I have a partitioned hard drive, which helps. Photoshop is installed on the C drive, while its primary scratch disks use the much bigger D drive. So far, there have been no downsides for me but I still want a faster machine. One day… |
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