Nikolina Petolas
- Michael Hanna
- 11 hours ago
- 2 min read
Nikolina Petolas is a magical-realism painter who has exhibited around the world in Europe, North America, Asia, and the Middle East. Recent exhibitions include Suburb gallery in Montréal, Art Basel in Miami, Museu de Caminha Municipal Museum in Caminha, Portugal, Museum Azeite in Sete Quintas, Portugal, National Palace Mafra in Portugal, Avant Galerie in Paris, Artcrush gallery and Haven gallery in New York. Nikolina has won multiple awards with the International Photography Awards (IPA) and London Photography Awards for her digital and photo work and has been published by Dodho magazine, The Swan Lake, Art Market Magazine, Aguilar, and LAVoyage.
These fantastical oil paintings represent fantasy-induced imagery with subtle effects such as flamingos behaving with human mannerisms, intricate gardens with giant bushes sculpted in the shape of creatures, and gigantic birds in an open landscape. Like the novels of Jules Verne or the fantasy series Elder Scrolls, Nikolina constructs her own sense of mythology and narrative around beasts and mysterious cloaked figures. These magical paintings have connotations beyond just mere illustration into unfamiliar fine art applications regarding theatrical presentations of unfolding events.
Theatre would be the best analogy for Nikolina’s paintings. Much like a play, her characters convey an untold story only revealed through her paintings. From women frolicking in an elite garden to mysterious cloaked figures embracing flamingos to giant birds commanding an open landscape, Nikoline explores the most fantastical aspects of the mind. Imagine if Nikolina’s works were installations rather than paintings or represented in film or photography, she chooses to capture fantasy-based environments with atmospheric sfumato and tension through paint rather than through a direct theatrical or three-dimensional representation.
Last Night (pictured above) reveals a series of paintings of a cloaked figure with an emotional relationship with a flamingo. With an open night sky and a classical interior, the mysterious character embraces the flamingo in a show of warmth and solidarity. Much like a Shakespearian production, we can only anticipate the climax in the seemingly dark yet intriguing setting.
Nikolina Petolas explores the connotations of fantasy-induced imagery with theatrical presentations. Her fantastical paintings could be used as a basis for various mediums of expression such as a book, a play, an installation, or performance art. Nikolina’s narrative-based approach to art using mysterious characters and beasts explores the darkest yet most serene aspects of the mind which invokes tranquility as much as melancholiness, depending on the scene she portrays. Through theatrics, realism, and a vivid imagination for narratives based on fantastical environments, Nikolina Petolas can be described as what a painter would be if based on a hypothetical intricate story-teller of a writer on classic fantasy literature. Much like the exotic landscapes of Jules Verne and mythological beasts, characters, and creatures from Elder Scrolls, Nikolina constructs a narrative which induces exploration and creativity.
