Artist Bio

Nick Wolf is an American painter from New York City, living and working in Stockholm. His mother was born in Alexandria, and Egyptian art has been a lasting influence on him since he was a small child. He has been painting since  age five and is self-taught. 

He trained as an actor at the Stella Adler Conservatory in the 1980s and has a background in theatre and film. 
His large-scale figurative paintings have been shown in a solo exhibition at FiveMyles in Brooklyn (2024), and in group exhibitions in New York, Stockholm, Hamburg, and Chongqing. 
Alongside painting, he makes short experimental films that are an extension of his visual language.  

Artist Story
The flatness of Egyptian stone reliefs and wall paintings is a major influence on my aesthetic. For me, two-dimensionality means being in the present moment, without any linear perspective that would represent the past or the future. 
Earlier in life, theatre and cinema were a religion for me. And so my paintings always revolve around archetypal characters caught in a dramatic web they must struggle with in order to deepen and evolve. At four and a half feet in height, the paintings are like large emblematic flags.

Psychological gestures in relation to various animals give each scene a tension through which a latent story can be interpreted. The animals are alter egos of the main subject that add another layer of complexity. 
I often paint pregnant women. For me, they are symbols of the ultimate power of creation, and I live vicariously through them. Their individual destinies reflect the struggles of my own life in art. 
The patterns in the backgrounds of the paintings are like the gauze once used for mummification. They encapsulate an inner world the characters exist within, and they function as a cocoon from which my characters emerge transformed. As do I through the creation of each work.