Skye Nicolas’ pixel paintings combine the careful layering of hidden narratives and intimate conversation with stylized visual subtext. The Walkman Series boldly epitomizes Nicolas’ lustrous neon color palette to meditate on our complex inter-social relationships with an omnipresent technology. Portable music devices such as the Sony Walkman blink and pulse beneath the looping text overlaid on a stark black background. These iconic machines of 20th century culture have always been an object that is synonymous with youth culture and coming-of-age tropes. Even when they are stylistically reduced to pixels and lines, they have the capacity to invoke the spirit of teen rebellion and to express adolescent angst while simultaneously providing emotional comfort and solace.
Nicolas’ stylistic choices are rooted in the compositional anatomy of historical abstract expressionist paintings. His source material is conceptually treated as digital objects containing data; digital representations of physical objects contextualized as cerebral readymades. He uses these remixed graphic elements and streamlines them into nebulous shimmering pixels that dance across the contrasting dark background of the digital canvas, mimicking the nebulous forms we see when our eyes are closed as we attempt to capture fleeting memories. Declarative statements gliding across the screen often lifted from 1980’s and 1990’s era song lyrics, serve as both internal dialogue and a crucial visual detail to complete the digital painting’s overall composition. The result of this complex process of reduction and layered storytelling is a visually poetic distillation in which the viewer finds themselves occupying; an intangible dreamscape atmosphere arousing an induced nostalgia that seduces and captivates the senses.