Get to Know... Nikita Knight

One of a Kind: Describe your work.

Nikita: I create large format abstract painting (up to 96 inches), oil on canvas, although I use acrylics for my composite and carbon fiber sculpture. I am inspired by life and work of Gerhard Richter, but I developed my own technique, constantly striving to elevate a technical complexity and create new 3D effects, mashing up and colliding the layers. While my style is abstract expressionism, each work has its own genesis. Sophistication of the technical process doesn’t interfere with the ephemeral part of the Art. Each painting is a result of my confrontation with the unconscious.

One of a Kind: When and why did you decide to become an artist? 

Nikita: I’ve never had to make that decision. I always felt the need to express myself. But then, as a child, I started intensive European training. While I still value the opportunity to master the medium, I found that figurative painting in general and social realism in particular, as well as the drills and stifling dogma, choked my imagination; at some point I stopped painting. My life as an Artist was over. After I moved to North America, freedom of the society in general, and freedom of self-expression in particular, combined with my personal journey, gave an artist in me an afterlife. I finally felt free to create without looking back. The skills alone did not work. It’s freedom that made me an artist. My art is first and foremost is the expression and celebration of freedom.

For the One of a Kind Spring Show, I am bringing paintings with vibrant palette to celebrate Chicago Spring. Winters are long and hard, it's time to feast on colors. 

One of a Kind: What's the best advice you've ever gotten?

Nikita: Live your own myth.