Nick Potts is slaying and if you haven’t been paying attention, take a look at any number of the gig, festival or album posters plastered over your local.
Nick Potts has been creating art, and blowing minds across the globe with his psych bending vintage-esque designs. We chat to the Sydney based artist to find out more.
Although Nick is one of the most prolific graphic artists we’ve seen, the sheer numbers in his portfolio by no means detracts from the quality of what we are seeing.
The Inner Sydney local has been lucky enough to work alongside some of the best names in new music as well as festival promoters, independent visual artists and media outlets. His style is unique, deeply creative and brimming with contemporary enthusiasm.
Think out of space ninja’s meets Buddhist mandala meets The NeverEnding Story – Total madness to imagine and Nick is just as wicked. It’s Nick’s own brand of vintage inspired colour schemes and psychedelic dreamscape imagery, a perfect fit for so many young bands and aesthetics for events around Australia coming at the moment.
In his own words “My style is kinda dark, psychedelic, spacey, old. My style is just a mashup of all my favourite movie posters and record covers which are mainly from around the 60s, 70s, so my work often reflects that era of imagery.”
For this artist the timing and context couldn’t have been better. Although art was never the big plan, Nick has found that it simply took over and he hasn’t looked back:
“I’ve always drawn and mucked around with art, but was never too serious about it until midway through my uni degree I really started taking it seriously.”
His medium is a definite and well-articulated mixture of drawing and digital alterations, working from a sketch and then into something more concrete through Photoshop.
As the old Inter-web is the best way of passing around art especially for events and album art, this fits seamlessly into Pott’s vision for where his work is going.
Regardless of the context each piece seems to weave effortlessly between the controversial and political as well as mystical and fantasy.
“I’ve always had a fascination in the dark or heavier side of things. I like to read books and watch documentaries and talks about a wide range of topics like witchcraft, conspiracies, drugs, spirituality, aliens…’”
It’s no wonder so many young artists are clamouring for his touch on their brand of music.
The collaborations and commissions that Nick has been involved in have now developed or were instigated by friendships with band members, and this has resulted in lengths of artistic freedom which is not always offered to artists in his field.
With inspirations including Alan Forbes, Phillipe Caza, HEAVY METAL magazine, Isaac Asimov and Wino, it would be hard not to create something really extraordinary and this is the only direction that Potts seems to be heading.
Onwards and upwards, it would be safe to say that Nick Potts is well on his way to becoming one of the foundational creatives of millennial music, and boy are we glad we nabbed him in time.
Currently working on an ep for Velvet Elevator and a CAVE records event poster. Nick just finished the Lazy Colts new album cover and is trying to figure out a design for a new t-shirt run which is in the works.
Stay tuned for more via his Instagram @nickpotts and keep your eyes peeled for his work, which is now hard not to miss.
While you’re here, check out our list of the druggiest albums of all time.
