What Lies Beneath the Surface: Meaning Behind The Artwork.

Why I paint, where the work comes from, and what I hope it awakens in you.

Contemporary –abstract artist Dylan James Nikich seated beside his painting Fragmented Dreams in his Phuket studio.

Colour may be the first thing you notice in my work, but it is rarely the point.

The real aim is to create something that brings you back to yourself. Something that holds your attention long enough for the noise to fall away and for you to recognise the hidden wealth already inside you—ideas, memories, emotions, possibilities and parts of yourself that may have been buried beneath everyday life.

A painting can meet you differently every time you return to it. What you find within the work often depends on what is happening within you.

That is where the real experience begins.

Painting gave my energy somewhere to go

I did not grow up knowing I would become a painter.

Before painting, my creative life revolved around sound. I studied sound production, made electronic music, worked as a DJ and hosted radio shows. Music taught me about rhythm, atmosphere, tension, release and the effect something can have on you before you fully understand it.

I began painting in 2019 during a difficult period of my life. I needed somewhere to place my energy and attention—not only as an outlet, but somewhere that energy could lead to a physical outcome.

Painting gave me that.

It allowed me to transmute and better understand what was happening inside and around me. The process could move my mind, heart and entire state somewhere else, whether it resulted in a completed painting or simply another stage along the way.

It also gave me the ability to create things that did not previously exist.

At the time, I felt disconnected from my environment and increasingly bored with the world immediately around me. I wanted to escape, travel and experience more of life. Painting became one way of reshaping my surroundings before I was able to change them physically.

I could create another world directly in front of me.

That discovery gave me a new lease on life.

Leaving and returning

My practice has moved through several chapters, including Australia, travelling through Europe and the United Kingdom, and eventually rebuilding my life and studio practice in Thailand.

There was also one significant pause.

After losing my studio, going through major personal changes and completing my final commissioned work in August 2023, I packed away my materials and stopped painting. I continued creating through photography, drawing, music and travel, but I did not return properly to canvas until November 2024 in Phuket.

When I began again, I was not simply continuing from where I had stopped.

The return stripped everything back.

It brought me closer to the raw, experimental and intuitive energy of my earliest years as an artist. I was painting for myself again, without looking outward for approval, trends, commercial outcomes or what somebody else might want to see.

That freedom became essential.

There are parts of painting that can be prepared for. I can organise the studio, select materials, build surfaces and create the conditions for work to begin. But the actual moment of creation cannot be switched on mechanically.

The work either arrives or it does not.

Sometimes a certain practice, movement, piece of music, tool or first mark can open the door. But ultimately, I am not fully in control of how a painting comes into existence. That uncertainty is not a problem to overcome. It is part of the reason I continue painting.

I never begin with a finished image

My process is intuitive, instinctual, meditative and exploratory, it is not careless.

I do not use detailed sketches or begin with a fixed image that I intend to reproduce. Most paintings begin with texture, rhythm, a tool, a mark-making device or several unconventional applicators.

Sometimes a colour comes first. Sometimes I simply need to put something on the surface.

That first layer gives my imagination information to respond to. Shapes begin to emerge.

Shadows, forms, movements and relationships appear. One decision creates the conditions for the next.

The first marks may remain visible in the final painting, or they may eventually disappear beneath many later layers. Either outcome is valuable.

Even a layer I dislike adds something: physical texture, visual weight, history, resistance and another surface for future decisions to react against.

I am not afraid to restart a painting.

A work may develop for a day, several weeks or months before I cover large parts of it and begin again. Nothing is truly wasted. Every previous version remains inside the finished object and contributes to its eventual richness.

That is also why I never release a painting simply because it appears finished or because somebody might buy it.

I need to stand behind it with complete confidence. I need to feel that it has reached the point where I can no longer improve it without compromising what it has become.

That fulfilment has to exist in me first. Only then can the work carry that same conviction into the world.

Every painting must become its own event

A painting may begin with a feeling, a period in my life, a recent experience, something I witnessed or a place I visited.

At other times, one completed work may inspire the beginning of another. I might return to a similar process, energy or palette while changing the materials, scale, texture or direction.

But I cannot reproduce a painting.

Even when I consciously return to an earlier idea, the result becomes something entirely different. Too many variables are involved: the surface, my physical movement, the consistency of the paint, gravity, timing, temperature, instinct and who I am on that particular day.

From a distance, two works may appear related. Up close, their differences become impossible to ignore.

Every surface contains its own nuances, accidents, decisions and history. Every angle reveals another relationship. Light changes it. Distance changes it. The room changes it.

Your mood changes it.

That complete inability to repeat the work is one of its greatest strengths.

Each painting is genuinely one of one.

A painting should reward attention

From across a room, one of my paintings may present itself as a single atmosphere, movement or field of energy.

As you approach, it begins to reveal itself.

Fine marks become visible. Pigments emerge from beneath transparent layers. Textures catch the light. Colours appear and disappear. Small worlds begin to exist inside the larger composition.

I want the work to reward attention rather than surrender everything immediately.

That requires presence.

Presence is also one of the greatest things painting gives back to me. When I am completely inside the process, everything unnecessary disappears. There is no past or future to manage. There is only the surface, the material and the next decision.

That state is not limited to the studio.

A powerful original work can bring a person back into the present simply by entering their field of vision. It can interrupt automatic thinking and create a moment of genuine attention.

People often search for happiness as though it is something waiting elsewhere. Much of what we describe as happiness is simply what becomes available when we are completely present.

My work is one way of creating and spreading more of that presence.

The meaning is not fixed

I am not trying to illustrate a specific landscape, object or storyline.

The work remains open because I want the person standing in front of it to participate.

Over the years, people have found portals, dimensions, fragmented dreams, fertility, hope, the Matrix, the birth of a star, the beginning of existence, the zero point, and even the image of a god shedding its skin and becoming its fully realised self.

Those interpretations may be completely different from anything I experienced while creating the work, but they are not wrong.

The painting acts as a meeting point between what I placed into it and what the viewer brings with them.

That exchange is where meaning becomes personal.

The work changes because you change

An original painting does not have to move physically to remain alive.

Its colours respond to different light. Its textures shift as you move around it. Details become visible from one angle and disappear from another.

But the deeper change takes place within the viewer.

We are continually changing—emotionally, mentally, physically and spiritually. Our experiences alter what we notice, what we remember, how we interpret and what we are ready to understand.

Because of that, the same painting can become a different experience years later.

Something that once felt quiet may eventually feel powerful. A detail you overlooked may suddenly become central. A work that originally reminded you of one chapter of your life may begin to represent another.

The painting has not changed.

You have.

And the work changes with you.

More than something placed on a wall

My paintings are created to hold presence wherever they live—inside a private home, hotel, wellness space, gallery, office or major public environment.

In a private setting, a painting may become part of one person’s daily life. In a public space, it may be encountered by thousands or even millions of people, each bringing their own memories, perceptions and inner worlds to it.

The scale of the audience changes, but the purpose remains the same.

I want the work to interrupt ordinary experience.

To create depth where there was previously only a wall.

To make people pause, move closer and discover something that was not immediately visible.

And perhaps, through looking into the painting, to recognise something within themselves that had been waiting to be seen.