Nicholas Ives is a contemporary artist based in Melbourne, Australia

He has held 12 solo & exhibited in over 40 group exhibitions within Australia, Florence, Berlin and Los Angeles, and has been selected in national awards & received private and public commissions.

Nicholas has held studio residences in Berlin, Germany & Florence, Italy.

Nicholas works a lecturer teaching painting in the Faculty of Art, Design & Architecture at Monash University, Melbourne.

Nicholas explores within his work realms of the Absurd and the Carnivalesque through a primarily figurative form.  His works flow across the borders of portraiture into abstract qualities, encouraging unexpected outcomes and collisions – encounters of the material surface and the imaginings of unknown painterly worlds.

“My works are human-scaled, at times intimate, explorative and personal, with heavy importance on the material and felt aspects the painting process.  Time allows the pieces to change and fluctuate. There’s a rapture and absurdity to making these paintings, revealing an ebb and flow of studio process that making drives the work itself.  I liken my practice to something that is elusive and adaptive and evolving, and operates within the fluid nature of paint.

“I find that incidents and experiences within painting articulate multiple possibilities for new lived realities.  A painting is the mid-state of an event that operates with infinite divergence… the instability of the painting process is a fluid reality that moves in the direction of the unlimited.  Painting is lived and defies abstraction, as it is an experiential travel towards a multitude of moments both past, future and side-by-side.  Painting moments always open new painting moments and will disrupt previous painting moments.”