We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Nicholas Ortega a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Nicholas , thanks for joining us today. How did you learn to do what you do? Knowing what you know now, what could you have done to speed up your learning process? What skills do you think were most essential? What obstacles stood in the way of learning more?

Ever since I can remember I’ve always been interested in creating art, drawing and painting especially. My Mother was an excellent illustrator, painter & airbrush artist who encouraged me and provided me with art supplies. She was my first art teacher. Some of my early memories are of her teaching me human face proportions and body proportions and how to begin with simple shapes. I continued to develop my drawing skills much like any other artist by imitating things I found inspiring. I’ve always been attracted to dark themed art. Some of my favorite artists are Zdzisław beksiński, H.R. Giger & M.C. Escher. I especially admire the gloomy inquisitive nature of their work. These artists utilize a lot of visual and thematic contrast which is something I apply to my work. Stephen Gammell, the artist who illustrated Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark was my first inspiration in this realm. I began as an artist imitating work inspired by him by drawing lots of skulls and monster fantasy stuff.
High school is when I was more formally introduced to painting. I was captivated straight away and felt a sense of comfort while demonstrating aptitude. My teacher at the time, Ms. Rezny was very encouraging and noticed similarities between my work and the famous American painter Jasper Johns. She lent me a book featuring his paintings and I was fascinated with the loose painterly quality of his work. This is when I learned to loosen up and let instinct and emotion influence my work. I also did a lot of experimenting with color and began figuring out what I think does and doesn’t work. At this time my work was very colorful, energetic and mostly non objective abstract. I continued to take all the drawing and painting classes throughout high school and absorbing as much as I could. My junior year is when I signed up for drafting which was by hand with mechanical pencils and not computers at the time.. This experience helped to refocus my intent when drawing. I loved the neat, clean and precise nature of drafting. Everything had to make sense, visually and mathematically. This is when I fell in love with mechanical pencils which is still among my favorite tools.
After high school I joined the Marine Corps which I did two tours to Fallujah Iraq and honorably discharged in 2007. About two months into boot camp my senior drill instructor, Ssgt. Mcdonough asked our platoon, “If there are any artists in here raise your hand.” I was totally surprised when he asked this question and my arm immediately went up along with about seven other recruits. He pulled us seven aside and said, “one of you is going to paint our platoon range flag and in order to figure out who’s the best candidate, I’m going to give you each a pen and paper and after lights out you will stay up in the head and draw three drill instructors in a victorious battle setting, when you’re done come and knock on my hatch.” After the rest of the platoon hit the rack and the lights went out us seven went to the head (large restroom) and we all began to draw our renditions. I drew three drill instructors standing in a field of bones with the middle figure with his hands stretched up receiving the souls of his conquered enemies. It was inspired by Shang Tsung from Mortal Kombat. After I finished, I knocked on his hatch to show him my drawing. He broke character from his typical serious stern demeanor and enthusiastically said, “holy shit Ortega, this is it!” He made a couple suggestions like including military vehicles in the back ground and positioning the flanking drill instructors differently. He told me that I wouldn’t believe it but there’s a lot of opportunities for artists in the Marines which there were. Within the next day or so he gave me a canvas, brushes and paint and told me to stay back at the barracks during training to paint. For the following week while the rest of my platoon had to get up and train, I got up and painted. It was a surreal feeling and I could sense the envy of my fellow recruits. When the platoon got back from a P.T session they’d come into the barracks all worn out. Some of them would come over to see my progress. One of my drill instructors heard a recruit try to give me advice on the painting and he immediately snapped at him, “are you the gd artist? No, Ortega is, get over to your rack!” It was funny but I also felt bad because it was good advice. At this point I’d forgot to paint the drill instructor boot laces. After boot camp I went into the fleet and my senior drill instructor was right about artists having opportunities. I went on to design a number of company shirts and logos. My First Lieutenant in Iraq. Lt. Garvey, asked me to customize his humvee with black paint. I did a tribalesque warrior skull on the hood. I think my art style really lent itself to military culture.
Once I was honorably discharged I was able to utilize the post 9/11 G.I bill which afforded me the opportunity to go to college. I enrolled at The Art Institute of Colorado to study film making. I was surprised at the lack of actual art classes available at the Art Institute like drawing or painting. There were more design based / work applicable type art classes. Around this time my mother had been fighting cancer and ultimately succumbed to it in 2009. I withdrew from school. Loosing my mother was quite devastating and I was unable to focus. Another year went by and I enrolled at Arapahoe Community College focusing on art once again. I took many of the art classes they offered. Painting and drawing 1-3 Ceramics, Jewelry making and design classes. I wasn’t interested in obtaining a degree. I just wanted to take nothing but art classes which is something the Gi bill has since adjusted. Veterans can no longer take electives exclusively, they must follow a degree path. After I took most of the art classes there I enrolled at RedRocks Community college and took more computer based art classes basically learning the different Adobe programs.
Heres a more direct answer to the questions asked. Most of what I’ve written explains how I learned what I know. Knowing what I know now I definitely could have sped up my learning process utilizing the internet and taking online free tutorials. Any technical artistic skill you’d want to learn is essentially free on YouTube. I could have spent more time utilizing that and spent more of my free time developing my skills. I think the most essential skills I learned were drawing fundamentals. Drawing is a strong foundation that lends itself to many mediums. Back in school I was surprised how many people in my intro painting classes had no idea how to draw. You’d think taking a drawing class would be a prerequisite to a painting class which isn’t always the case. Another thing I think is essential is understanding color theory. It helps speed up the decision making process I think. Loosing my Mother early into my initial enrollment in school was the biggest obstacle for me to overcome. This led to depression which became another obstacle.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I currently work for a company called Noyes Art Designs, primarily as an art installer and consultant. We source and install art and signage for new construction buildings including hotels, luxury apartment buildings, and health care facilities. We also do residential art installations. I also help other artists install their works when conditions are more difficult than usual for them. Sometimes a piece of art will be large and needs to go high up on a wall. Some people don’t want to deal with heights, so I’ll set up scaffolding and mount their piece of art. Some artwork will need to be mounted into hard surfaces like marble, which I’m familiar with drilling into. Also, sometimes an artist will ship their art and not want to fly into town to install it, so I will.
Often times, people need suggestions of where the most appropriate location for their piece of art should go. I’ll help them decide whether it be a commercial or residential setting. I also help art galleries install their shows.
The work can be challenging. Sometimes the things people want mounted on a wall are non-typical and seemingly difficult, for example, a bunch of bowling ball-sized glass orbs, a large sculpture, or a 200lb mirror. Most of the time, I install stretched canvas or framed art and signage, but the occasional head-scratcher does come along. Sometimes it’s high-volume work where a new health care facility opens and they have 400+ pieces of art and signs that need to be installed throughout their facility along with some original installation art.
Some of the more proud moments for me are when I overcome a difficult challenge. Sometimes an installation will really test my knowledge and experience. Being an excellent problem solver along with my knowledge of tools and different hardware types really helps with the work I do. When I accomplish a task and I see that my client is satisfied, really makes the work worth it to me.
I think it’s important for me to bridge the gap from my experience as an artist and how I got involved in the work I do now. After I finished using my GI bill for school, I started working for my grandfather’s roofing company, Z & Z Roofing. I immediately needed an income after my GI benefits ran out, so it made for a smooth transition from going to school to going to work. I would soon discover how incredibly physically demanding roofing is, and a year or two later, I began to look for other work. I decided to try something totally different and applied for a job in the medical marijuana industry. I started out as a bud tender at The Walking Raven on Broadway in 2011. Shortly after I was hired, I was offered a job in their grow facility. I would spend the next 5 years growing marijuana for a couple of different companies. I was starting to get bored with the repetitive farm-like nature of growing cannabis, although I was very good at it. I have a green thumb and still plant a garden every spring. One of the owners of the last MJ company I grew for owned many residential properties throughout Colorado and was looking for someone to help remodel them. I told him I could help on the weekends, and he put me in touch with the general contractor he worked with. I soon transitioned from growing mj full time to doing residential construction full time. It payed a lot better than growing mj and it was nice to be challenged once again. I began learning the ins and outs of residential construction, which I would continue until 2018/2019.
Being an artist, I’m a member of a number of art communities online. One day there was a post from my friend, Eric Wall on a Denver artist page asking if anyone was willing to assist him with installing art. I sort of interpreted the post as installing “installation art.” I responded to his post, which was quickly followed up with a phone call. I told Eric, “I’m interested in helping you with your installation art.” He replied, “It’s not necessarily installation art but rather the installation of original paintings and framed artwork.” I told him that I’m still interested.
He installed and still installs art for art collectors and companies alike. He taught me a lot about how to properly and safely install artwork in various conditions. He also showed me what type of hardware is appropriate for different art types. The work came somewhat naturally to me as I already had a construction background and was familiar with tools and hardware. He did fill in a lot of gaps though, as he showed me different math formulas for calculating heights, how to handle expensive artwork, and a variety of other things. I am especially grateful to him for introducing me to a job in the art world that I otherwise didn’t realize existed.

We’d love to hear your thoughts on NFTs. (Note: this is for education/entertainment purposes only, readers should not construe this as advice)

My view on NFT’s are that they were a flash in a pan. When they were introduced I think their value came from the excitement and newness of crypto currency being more broadly adopted. They were a trend that fizzled out. When they came out I was very shocked at the value people placed on them. People were paying thousands of dollars for essentially what was a jpeg. There was an instance where I thought to myself, “Am I missing something here,” so I briefly hopped on the hype train and minted a few on my own NFT’s through MetaMask. By the time I minted my own NFT’s the NFT hype started to die down. Bitcoin started to severely drop from its all time high of $69,000 or so and people began trying to offload their NFT’s on whoever would buy them. To this day, most NFT’s purchased have significantly went down in value and remain down. I don’t se them becoming popular again any time soon. Although, I could totally be wrong and there could be second wave NFT resurgence. I shouldn’t underestimate the power of trends and hype.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

I think for a lot of artists that the mission that drives us comes from a place within. There’s an inherent drive that requires us to create. For me, there is an itch that can only be scratched by drawing and painting. At this point in my life I don’t create art to generate an income although I do sell the occasional art print or take an art commission of a request I find interesting. I spend a significant amount of time to finish a single piece of art. I would even say too long to keep up with social media algorithms. Some artists post a new piece weekly or daily and sometimes their work reflects that. Some artists will post daily their progress of a single piece. I do post on social media but I find that constantly trying to video document my work and posting videos can hinder and interrupt my creative process. Simply put it’s a distraction. For artists who rely on their art as an income they don’t have the luxury of not worrying about social media. At this point I don’t want to apply that kind of pressure to my art. I’m grateful to have a job in the art industry still making connections with artists while not having to worry about monetizing the personal work I make. Another goal for me is to create something I’m impressed with. I try to challenge myself with each new piece I create. Not to sound selfish but I primarily make art for myself which is a form of therapy for me. It’s something Iv’e always done and will continue to do. If other people like what I make that’s a bonus. I don’t create to follow trends or make things I think other people will like.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: Nicholas_ortega_art
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