La passione di Nicolas
Nicolas Agus is a tattoo artist from Italy, whose art combines graphics and sketching.
Nicolas is from a small town called Acquasparta. He’s been living here since he was born, but he also travels a lot.
At the moment, he works from a private atelier where he creates all his projects for tattoos and painting.
However, as we mentioned before, he travels a lot, so you can usually find him in the main cities of Europe, such as Amsterdam, Paris, Berlin, Zurich, etc., especially in Milan.
For people unfamiliar with you, can you please share a bit about the technique itself and how you came to practice it?
Yes of course! I started drawing when I was a little child with my mother, copying cartoons and various comics. From that moment on, I have never stopped.
As I grew up I understood that what I wanted to do in my life was draw, so, despite undertaking economics studies, I continued to draw day and night.
And so it went…a series of evolutions ended up arriving at today’s “style”, both in tattooing and painting (because I dedicate myself to both anyway).
My technique is based on the use of the pen without using the pencil and the eraser, so it is not possible to erase, and the error becomes a detail and a fundamental part of the final work.
I’m looking for a raw and spontaneous approach without too many constructions or corrections.
In this way, I can make all my work very spontaneous unique, and real.
We can therefore say that my work is based on the search for the essence of the subject through a spontaneous, very personal and introspective creative process.
How do you see art, in general, and how do you approach it?
I really don’t know what art is.
I think is a concept, so it’s impossible to find a true answer to this question for me.
Maybe “art” could be a lot of different things.
In my personal opinion, art is the expression of the artist in relationship with his response to his own perception of the world.
Are you listening to music while working? If so, what kind of music gets you in the zone?
Yes, of course, I can’t work without music.
I’m always listening to music while tattooing or painting, or also living, haha.
And I like different kinds of music, it really depends on my period.
I go from rock to electronic, from rap to punk…so I don’t have a favorite one.
At the moment, I really like electronic and American rap/trap.
If you’re familiar with the tattoo artist, Sewp, he once said, “I remember watching some show in the 90s about this little goth girl. It’s a pretty vague memory, I must have been like 5 or 6 years old. But when I saw this dark loner girl who hated everybody, my young brain started registering some emotions that I’d never felt before. I was, like, in love with this little dark-haired freaky girl.”
Do you also have some similar memories about how you started drawing?
As I said before, I remember drawing cartoons and comics in my house with my mom, something like Pokémon and Dragonball.
Lately, around 14/15 years old, I started drawing some graffiti projects, and then, when I was 19/20 years old I started to be super focused on drawing, and I started putting all my emotion on the paper.
It was a dark period of my life, during my university, it definitely changed my concept of life and art, so I’m super grateful for that dark period.
You combine graphics and sketching, do you want to shift your portfolio more in any other direction?
We’ll see.
At the moment I’m focused on body shapes and anatomy, so I would like to work on big-scale projects to follow the body shapes as much as I can.
About graphics and sketching I don’t have any plan, I’ll follow the evolution of myself, or I’ll go somewhere else, but I’m not sure which one. I like to change sometimes.
What are you looking forward to or excited about for your career?
At the moment, in my tattoo works, I want to introduce some new subjects.
I’m really into a flower pot with decorations on a large scale, I love to freehand this kind of subject and I love how it looks on the body.
I also really want to paint more, but winter is coming, so I think that is going to happen hahahaha.
Do you have any future travel plans?
Yes, I’ll continue to travel all around Europe, for sure. I’ll be in Zurich, Paris, Amsterdam, Berlin, Hamburg, and Milan of course. I also will be in Tel Aviv next year and more.
At the same time, I have a private atelier in my hometown (Acquasparta) and I want to spend the rest of my time there.
Do you have a retirement plan or other passions that you’re looking forward to starting in the future?
I want to paint and to draw till the end of my life.
But I also like to spend time doing nothing at the sea and also do some training. That’s it.