Nicolas Craig, Canadian graffiti artist born in 1990, is originally from Laval. He completed a B. in visual and media arts at UQAM in 2015.
He is one of the pioneers of Montreal mural painters. He has produced murals and has worked with MU since 2011. In a contemporary and surreal style, his art is balanced on a thin line filled with dream and hope.
Each of Nicolas Craig’s paintings follows a guideline: to highlight the beauty of the human. With a skilful way of playing with human forms, bodies can be liquefied or stretched. However, there is still a meaning behind this distortion: an underlined positive feeling. Craig’s art goes beyond bodies. Behind each work, there is a research on the human and its functioning. They appear as symbols such as flowers, butterflies, or pop culture icons. I do my research around the woman. The fairer sex is often portrayed in a context of an overabundance of bodies. These clusters of humans are deconstructed and decontextualized. They are usually juxtaposed with other types of images, which creates friction between the bodies and the sporadic “intruders”. The artist loves contrast, each painting is a reflection on life and its two sides. The duality is striking but still remains in the painting, embodying the absurdity of life.
Behind each of his prints hides a message that the artist wants to denounce in a unique way. Using a powerful symbol or word that will be repeated more than a thousand times, a contrast between the words and the image will be created while generally taking the shape of a face. or a signifying object. This way of creating opens up to a double reading, both visual and intellectual, while surprising the viewer who will often see, at first sight, only a simple drawing.
The artist’s approach can be both playful and committed, always combining a pop-art side that gives it its uniqueness. We find there notions of contrast, opposition or even reinforcement which make it possible to reveal behind the scenes and lead to discussions on forgotten issues. This artist with strong museum potential has an already well-established career.
