Interview: Nicole Dimt
Luca Curci talks with Nicole Dimt during the 10th Edition of CONTEMPORARY VENICE 2022, at Palazzo Albrizzi-Capello.

Nicole Dimt is a 23-year-old painter from Toronto, Canada. Nicole holds a BFA in Visual Arts from York University, with a specialization in acrylic painting. In her art, Nicole reflects on her childhood, projecting feelings of joy, innocence, and child-like wonder. Nicole’s art relies heavily on the use of highly saturated and vibrant colour, as well as line, and shape. Nicole’s artworks with themes of architecture, nature and technology, creating Futurist, dystopian, and psychedelic wonderlands, full of overwhelming detail, pattern, and fascination. Nicole describes her art as “organized chaos.” Nicole’s art also works hand-in-hand with the digital world, collaborating with heavy photo manipulation, colour inversion and total distortion, adding an unnatural or synthetic quality to her paintings. This added quality to her works speaks upon the narrative of the grasp that the digital world has had on us, and how it has warped our perception of reality. The digital world consumes Nicole in her everyday life, not only being a young adult with social media, but also as an individual who works full time as a digital concept artist, and has impacted her visions of how art is now capable of being created, and how the limitations of art have been completely pushed in new, and exciting directions.

Luca Curci – What is art for you?
Nicole Dimt – For me, art is an escape. As someone who struggles to connect with my emotions, art allows me to better understand my psyche, and escape reality for a few minutes, hours or days. Art is very personal and spiritual to me. Creating art feels similar to meditation to me, as it allows me to digest my thoughts and feelings, and become one with my inner self. Art has allowed me to better understand who I am as a person, and navigate becoming an adult in a big, scary world.

LC – What are your thoughts while you paint? Do you have any rituals while you work?
ND – As funny as it sounds, I do not think while I paint. I have a mind that is constantly thinking and racing, and painting is my way of making these overwhelming thoughts stop. Painting to me comes naturally, and my brain reaches a point of “Don’t think. Just do.” With that being said, while I work, I have to be stimulated by sounds. I always work with something going on in the background, whether I am watching a TV show, listening to music, or on the phone with a friend. I cannot work if there isn’t something else going on around me, because then I lose my flow and start to overthink what I am doing. Ironically, being distracted by something else helps me stay focused.

LC – Did your style change over the years? In which way?
ND – I wouldn’t necessarily say my style has changed, but rather, my motifs and subject matter. Technically speaking, nothing about the way I paint has changed. I am a painter who has always been very detail-orientated and color-focused, but I am not one who likes to blend or spend too much time on one area, and that has never changed. I work in patches and have to finish one area before I start another. Although my professors discouraged me from painting this way, I will never color block or create an underpainting. Over the last few years, I have moved my artistic studies from realism to abstracted reality, and have a wider range of themes that I exercise. Since starting a digital job, combining the digital arts with fine arts has been a key element in the way I work and create, and has allowed me to broaden the subject matter of my paintings.

LC – Do you use art to express something in particular? Is it your medium of expression?
ND – I use art as a way of connecting with my innermost emotions and to help myself express my deepest thoughts that I keep very hidden from the world. My art is very personal to me and helps me to comfort myself. Painting is absolutely my medium of expression. Colour stimulates me and makes me feel excited. Painting with copious amounts of colour enables me to express who I truly am as a person. Over the years I’ve had trouble understanding what my art means. I’ve always been told that art must have a meaning, whether political, social, or internal. It has taken me a while, but I’ve realized that my art is a way of escaping harsh feelings of loneliness and solitude that I have struggled with my entire life, by creating exciting new realms that I can run away within.

LC – How do you feel when you see your work completed?
ND – When I see my work completed, I feel content, but never satisfied. One thing that has remained consistent in my work is the need to constantly elevate and push boundaries. I am always looking for bigger canvases to work on, and constantly adding more and more detail to everything I do, in order for me to challenge myself, and see how far I can take my practice. I am never satisfied when I complete a painting, as I want to then find the next, bigger and more complex project to start on.

LC – What is the message linked to the artwork that you have shown in this event? How is connected to the theme of the entire exhibition?
ND – My artwork exhibited, Ceiling of Wonder, embodies the theme of Future Landscapes. The ceiling of Wonder is a work I created while roaming downtown Toronto, the city I have lived in my entire life. The work is a heavy Futurist, digitally modified and distorted interpretation of a building I passed, which speaks on the ideas of infinite extension, and chaotic self-expression. This work combines my inner child-like spirit, with psychedelic and dystopian depictions of the city, and space.

LC – We were attracted by your last artistic production, has the artwork presented been created for the exhibition, or as a spart of preexisting works?
ND – This work was created during my university undergrad, as a part of a past collection of architectural/digital-inspired works. I created this work when I started to first understand and dabble with the digital arts and Photoshop.

LC – What is your idea about ITSLIQUID GROUP?
ND – ITSLIQUID GROUP is a fantastic organization for emerging or established artists. ITSLIQUID provides a multitude of opportunities for artists to participate, exhibit, and network within, and keeps the artist in their best interest always.

LC – Do you think ITSLIQUID GROUP can represent an opportunity for artists?
ND – I absolutely think ITSLIQUID can represent an opportunity for artists. Participating in this exhibition alone has been a great opportunity for my career. I will certainly look to collaborate with ITSLIQUID GROUP again in the future.

LC – Did you enjoy cooperating with us?
ND – I absolutely enjoyed cooperating with ITSLIQUID GROUP. This process has been very smooth every step of the way. Maddalena Masotto, along with the rest of the team, has been very quick to answer all my inquiries and has never failed to provide me with the information I needed. I cannot thank ITSLIQUID GROUP enough.