This is something that's so provisional and fragile. "The beauty of Nikkolas Smith's unfinished portraits for unfinished lives is haunting, and also resists the old kind of empire, you know, casting somebody in bronze and marble and granite and just says, no, no, this is human flesh. That sentiment impresses MacArthur Fellow and UCLA professor Peter Sellars, who teaches courses called Art as Social Action and Art as Moral Action. I feel like that kind of is a parallel to these people's lives because they did not get a chance to really finish their life like they should have."
For his portrait of Ahmaud Arbery, "I said, 'you know what? I have to draw just the tragedy, that terror and the pain that I'm sure was on his face.' I wanted to, in my abstract oil painting style, just create a really kind of fluid piece with a lot of emotion. "Typically, I like to create something a little bit more joyful, even if it's a tragic situation," Smith says. I feel like that kind of is a parallel to these people's lives because they did not get a chance to really finish their life like they should have. Smith has painted civil rights, sports and cultural icons as well as police abuse victims, including portraits of 26-year-old Breonna Taylor in her EMT uniform, 18-year-old Michael Brown in a graduation robe, and 25-year-old Ahmaud Arbery in a tux.Ī lot of my pieces are unfinished. Smith's fans include former first lady Michelle Obama, who posted his George Floyd painting on her Instagram account, and singer Rihanna, who retweeted his painting of the late hip-hop star Nipsey Hussle. "And so that really honored Black Lives Matters' spirit of creating humanity for Black people." "He often captured people in their happy moments right before they were felled by violence," says Scales. She says his portraits of George Floyd and others are in line with the group's message about honoring the dignity of Black people. She says after seeing his images online go viral over the years, BLM invited Smith to Art Basel last year, and asked him to create a logo for its "What Matters" civic engagement campaign. "Nikkolas is one of those artists who call on us to change the way we see ourselves," says Kailee Scales, managing director of Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation. The group Black Lives Matter commissioned Floyd's portrait for the billboard and a video tribute to victims of police brutality. Its caption reads, "Rest in Power, Beautiful." For the semi-abstract image, Smith used what he says were "violent" brushstrokes around Floyd, who wears a tuxedo. Smith's portrait of George Floyd, whose killing by a police officer sparked worldwide protests against police abuse, is now the centerpiece of billboards in New York's Times Square and the Beverly Center shopping mall in Los Angeles. I've been trying to trying to process how that made me feel as a Black man." "There are so many Black lives that have just been taken from this Earth. "I'm always looking at what's going in the world and trying to reflect that," Smith says. He says he's following the lead of the late singer Nina Simone, who advised it's the artist's duty to reflect the times. For the past seven years, the Los Angeles-based concept artist has celebrated and mourned Black lives in his work. Nikkolas Smith calls himself an "artivist": an artist and an activist. Smith posts his digital paintings - many with social justice themes - to social media in the hope that his art will inspire change.
Artist Nikkolas Smith found inspiration for this painting in Dai Sugano's photograph of a protester kneeling before police.
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