Throughout history, all over the world, there have been many Renaissance movements. Like the widely known European Renaissance of the 14th-17th centuries, which saw a revival in classical Greek & Roman arts, philosophy, and sciences.
Or the Harlem Renaissance of the early 20th century, which celebrated Black history and culture, and gave voice to Black art, literature, and music through the works of Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, and Countee Cullen (just to name a few).
Or even Beyoncé’s Renaissance, which has brought out the alien superstar in all of us. I mean, the amount of times I randomly screamed UNIQUE! after this album came out. The impact.
These chapters in history teach us that there is power in change, disruption, and creativity. That human progress is not a linear path, rather transformative leaps. We either innovate or dissipate.
The current times are no different. Our modern world is undergoing a Renaissance of its own, driven by technological advancements, unprecedented connectivity, and instantaneous access to information. This new contemporary Renaissance spans traditional media and the digital/social landscapes, pushing boundaries and reshaping human expression.
We are in a new age of discovery—a digital artistic reawakening. Where creativity knows no bounds, and technology intertwines with artistry.
“[Digital art] is a brand new medium that has yet to find its way in the upper echelon of the creative world. But there is a place for it. And I'm gonna stick to it. I want to see how this thing grows.”
Say hello to our #artist2lookout4, Lorgio Nim.
Nim is a Burundi-born, Ottawa-based digital painter and creative director. Inspired by the styles of Basquiat, Titian, Michelangelo and da Vinci, he creates absolutely stunning digital art pieces that spotlight and celebrate people of color. Often depicting figures in deep, earth tone hues and psychedelic light, he transports viewers to his “new Renaissance”. His new reality.
His work weaves visual storytelling with human experience and aims to capture permanence. “I want to capture timelessness, but then also put people of color in that same light of timelessness.”
Each pen stroke, color choice, and composition helps to convey a distinct language of expression.
What do these pieces say to you? What emotions do they evoke? Do you feel empathy? Sadness? Happiness? Are you inspired? Are you moved? For Nim, trends come and go, but feeling… feeling is understood forever. “I want to create pieces that capitalize on emotion,” he says. “Emotion is going to be relevant whether it's today or tomorrow or 100 years from now.”
And because his work is all digital, his pieces can very well eternalize sentiment. But I had to ask, since digital files can get corrupted, erased or lost, if he was ever afraid of losing his work. Can digital art withstand the test of time? He laughed and reiterated, “Have backups. Have backups for your backups. Have backups stored away in a hard drive that you're going to completely forget about, put it in a safe somewhere. I have endless backups of my pieces.”
This inspired even more conversation about the digital art space, its comparison to traditional art forms and galleries, as well as its evolution. As entrancing as Nim’s artistry is, he shared that there are still people who are shooketh when they find out that his work is 100% digital. He says, “For the longest time, digital art hasn’t been looked at, in the creative community at least, as on the same par or the same level as traditional paintings or oil paintings.” But Nim is trying to change this conversation. He emphasizes the amount of technique and thought that goes into each one of his digital paintings.
And tbh, so what if art is digital? Isn’t it just another avenue for expression? What’s “traditional” anyway? What even is “normal”? Especially as it pertains to the arts. If the art resonates with you, isn’t that all that matters? In his words, “There’s no such thing as conventional art. There’s no such thing as conventional beauty. It all comes down to who you are and what you’re trying to say with your work.”
Nim has collaborated with various artists around the world, most notably producing artwork for the Oscar-winning film, If Beale Street Could Talk. His work has also been featured in the CBC, CBC Arts, CTV, Shondaland, and more.
In your bio, you state that you are a self-taught digital painter who didn’t take an interest in anything remotely artistic until 2016. What happened in 2016 that sparked this calling?
That's actually a funny story. So in 2016, I was on Instagram scrolling and I came across a piece by an artist named Cesar—amazing, amazing artist. I didn't know him at the time, he was just starting out. And I reached out to him and asked, “What is this that I'm looking at? What is this thing?” He told me it's a digital painting and I just started asking him a plethora of questions: How do you do it? What software do you use? I just kind of started playing and fell in love with it from there. Initially, it started with just my laptop and I'd be using my mouse pad just to make the illustrations. Then I invested in a Wacom tablet, and it was a whole new level. When I got that new equipment, I would always hit Cesar up and ask, “How do I make this work? How do I connect this and optimize that?” And he would help me out. By the way, this is over the span of a couple of years. I feel to some degree that [not necessarily having the tools other digital artists use] gave me a bit of an edge. I could get into the technical stuff of it, but it's a bore honestly. Basically, I had to learn how to create with crutches because I didn't have a pen. Like, I just recently got an iPad. Once I got the pen, it was very quick and it’s so much easier, my workflow is so much better. It’s a game-changer. You can actually see my progression from when I was just using my mouse pad to when I got the Wacom tablet. There’s a huge leap in the quality of art that I’m creating. Yeah, I took the long way around, but it helped because now I feel I'm in such a comfortable position and comfortable space.
What is it about Renaissance art that draws you in?
It's timeless. The biggest thing with my art that I try to capitalize on is to make art that’s timeless. I try to make art that people can look at 100, 300, 500 years from now and still think that's beautiful. There's a place for art that is relevant in the moment. I'll give you a very benign example: something could happen in the world or someone wins an award, and you go out of your way to create art that captures the moment. That's great. But it's only going to be heavily appreciated in the moment just because the hype around it, right? No one's really going to come back to it because it was just for the moment. Now just to play devil’s advocate, 100 years down the line somebody might come back to that piece and be like, “Oh, this piece was painted with this. And this happened because of political references.” And that's great, there's a place for that. But again, it's not for me. I want to create pieces that capitalize on emotion. Emotion is going to be relevant whether it's today or tomorrow or 100 years from now. Just like Renaissance art—yes, they are periodic, but the most important thing is that they create a world for you to get lost in. Usually, mythological worlds that just don't exist. But even though they don't exist, they evoke certain emotions. Emotions we're feeling today that people hundreds of years ago were feeling. So that's my obsession with Renaissance art. And one of the reasons why I like to call myself ‘the new Renaissance’.
What do you mean when you say “the new Renaissance”?
There’s a double meaning to that. We can start with the timelessness of Renaissance art. In the beginning, I would try to make art that would gain the most attention. By that I mean doing a portrait of somebody famous or creating something that might have happened in the world that's gonna garner that attention immediately, just to get as many likes and as many eyes online as possible. Then I shifted away from that and wanted to focus on Renaissance pieces that a lot of people just aren't doing anymore. So I wanted to get back to that, put my own twist on it, and create in a brand new medium. For the longest time, digital art hasn’t been looked at, in the creative community at least, as on the same par or the same level as traditional paintings or oil paintings. And I want to change that conversation because I do really feel like there is a lot of technique. There's a lot of thought that goes into digital paintings. It's a brand new medium that has yet to find its way in the upper echelon of the creative world. But there is a place for it. And I'm gonna stick to it. I want to see how this thing grows. I want to be one of the people that's pushing it. When people think of digital art or great digital artists, I want to be one of the first things that they think of. The second meaning would be a lot of the timeless pieces that I fell in love with that were inspired by the Renaissance period. You don’t see people of color in almost any of them. Especially [in Burundi] where I grew up, we didn't really have paintings that captured life at that time. Whenever I paint, it's never a conscious decision, but a lot of my subjects are people of color. And that’s just because that’s my experience. That is how I live my life. That is how I see it. If I paint anything else, I feel like I'm not being true to myself and who I am. I want to capture timelessness, but then also put people of color in that same light of timelessness. So, that's why I put ‘the new’ in it right? Because it's not the Renaissance like we know it. It’s the new thing.
You’ve mentioned that your work has been described as “afrocentric”. Do you agree with that sentiment? How do you define your art?
That’s a tough one. This is one of those introspective questions where it's like, I'm Afrocentric, yes, but I never try to put labels on my art. I try to leave it as open as possible. The same way I don't necessarily like naming my pieces, I don't necessarily like describing my art. I try to leave it up to the interpretation of whoever is looking at the art. I've never been in a situation where somebody interprets my art a certain way and I'm like, “No, no, no, that's not what I meant by that. That's wrong.” If that's how you feel, that's how you feel. It's valid. That's kind of what I want to highlight. Like, you can call my art Afrocentric. I personally wouldn't. Even though it's just me, I am a product of all these different cultures and environments that I was exposed to as a kid. Whether you want to call it Afrocentric or not, it's just an insight into me. I feel like when you put a label on it, that’s a very quick and easy way to get boxed in. I don't like to be boxed in. I'm claustrophobic. We're a spectrum. And I try to embody that as much as possible.
The piece you’re most proud of in your collection is your tribute piece to the late great Jean-Michel Basquiat. What does it evoke in you?
I was very tied down to the limited palette of Michelangelo where he’s playing with a lot of browns. And it was the first time where I was like alright, let me try to play with some color now. That was literally my first attempt at it, and it came out great. I love the piece. It was a huge confidence boost because I had gotten so used to doing one thing and people had gotten so used to me doing one thing, I couldn't see myself doing anything else. So, [that time] was a significant period in my creative journey. That piece was also a turning point for me. It’s one of many turning points, but it was definitely a turning point where I was just like, okay, I don't have to be tied down to a specific style or way of creating. I can just do whatever. The feedback that I got from it was further validation that I can make dope stuff even though it doesn't look like my previous work.
Do you think digital art reaches more audiences than traditional art galleries? How do you think the digital art landscape will evolve?
If you're going strictly off of numbers, I'd definitely say digital art [reaches more audiences] just because of the way we share it. It's all just a quick post and then boom, it's available to millions, if not billions of people instantaneously. But with that being said, I cannot overlook the value of having a piece in a gallery, and having it life size—being able to walk in and actually look at the piece. I never actually get the chance to see what my art looks like life size and on prints. But a close friend of mine recently ordered one of my prints and I was over at his place, and it was the first time that I’d seen my piece that big, 24in x 36in. I looked at it and I was just lost in my own art. Like, I painted this. It was so surreal for me because I've looked at that specific piece on a screen for hours while I was creating it. I knew every inch of it right? But even still, it was just very surreal to look at that work in physical form, see it in person and get lost in that world physically. So, as much we reach more people digitally with the way we share it, the emotion that I love to captivate and the longevity that I look to achieve, that's gonna be done in physical spaces. The way I share my digital art is just a vehicle to where I want to eventually get to.
Your end goal is to create art that is timeless, but digital files can get corrupted or lost. Are you ever afraid of your losing your work? In your opinion, can digital art last forever?
The cloud man—lifesaver. It’s rarely happened, but if a piece gets lost, there's certain steps that you can take to ensure you preserve it. Just like the same way you preserve the integrity of a 500 year old painting, you can take steps as a digital creator to preserve your work. Have backups. Have backups for your backups. Have backups stored away in a hard drive that you're going to completely forget about, put it in a safe somewhere. I have endless backups of my pieces. A lot of people have raised the question: If it's digital piece, how is it truly valuable? I can just hit copy/paste and then boom, I have multiple copies, right? That conversation started shifting through when we got introduced to NFTs. I very much have the mindset that NFTs are a brilliant idea. It’s just the time and the way in which they were introduced to the world that was just completely wrong—is completely wrong. Because the type of art that was selling for millions and millions of dollars was very, and this is not an affront to any artist or any sort of style, but the art that was selling for that much was due to the hype. That's all it was. It had nothing to do with traditional art. For an art piece to be considered valuable, it's not just the technique, it's everything to do with who the artist is. What's their story? What's the story behind the piece itself? How long did it take? All these things factor in. But with the introduction of NFTs, it was all about who's the most popular artist. It was a huge wave that died down. I feel like in a couple years, it’s going to start to pick up again. But in the proper way. The vehicle of NFTs is definitely the future of digital art being able to be collected by collectors and also valued on the same level as traditional pieces. I’m just waiting for the right moment. [Right now], I'm focusing on creating as much as I can, creating a catalog for myself. I'm trying to be as consistent as possible with my creations. I just want to be ready for when the moment comes.
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Interview by Rahel Tekle