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

Nick, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today When did you first know you wanted to pursue a creative/artistic path professionally?

Honestly, since I could walk. I remember just absolutely loving creating artwork of all kinds. I have an over-active brain that just never stops, and sitting and drawing would help me focus on one thing instead of a hundred. Getting into the creative zone was almost therapeutic to me and still is. When I was very young, all the way to now, I just can’t stop making things, whether it be art, or music, I need to create. I knew if this was all I truly loved to do, I needed to find a way to do it for a living, and my whole life has been in the pursuit of it. Im lucky enough to say all my hard work has paid off and Im able to do this full time.

Nick, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

My name is Nick Flook, but most people know me as FLOOKO. I’ve been creating artwork since I was very little. Producing art and music were always my biggest passions in life and the only thing I ever really felt naturally drawn to. I’ll attach a fun little snippet of when I was around 4 years old, painting in the park, that the local newspaper decided to post. I’m now 37 and still creating non stop !!! As a kid I always enjoyed the darker fantasy art in a lot of movies from the 80’s . I was super young, but it still really caught my imagination. Especially the 1981 animated movie “Heavy Metal”. It was before my time, but I’d catch reruns late at night. Then in the beginning of the 90’s, 3d computer animation was starting to be shown on tv more often, with Canadian shows like “reboot”, and my imagination went totally nuts !! I just knew I wanted to be a professional artist. Art and music were the only things that ever really grabbed me. All the nostalgic imagery of my childhood really comes through in everything I make now.
In my later teens, I was really into doing 3d visual effects work for the silly movies me and my friends were making. By this time I was really into 3d animation and teaching myself how to do it with online tutorials. I ended up going to Sheridan College in Oakville, Canada, for Media Arts so I could hopefully meet some people that were into what I was into. Growing up in my small town of Chatham, Ontario, Canada which is mostly farmland, it was hard finding people who were into this stuff.

I eventually became a freelance Visual Effects artist for a quite some time, almost 15 years. Working on television, commercials, movies, everything. Mostly doing 3d work, which was my favourite. Constantly living in this 3d art space for so long really helped with my painting, which I always did as a hobby on the side. I think it gave me the skills to better visualize my work in 3d before actually even painting it. Painting was my escape to create whatever I wanted to make without the pressures of work. Once my artwork started taking off on sites like reddit, constantly making the front page, my following grew larger and larger to the point where i left the film industry to paint full time which Im still doing :)

Over the years I’ve been lucky enough to cross some major goals off my list such as doing tour poster art for big bands like PRIMUS, creating my first artbook – Flooko Selected Works Volume 1, as well as release some instrumental albums on spotify !! Thing are still growing and Im still creating every chance I get ! Big things to come !!!!

In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?

Honestly, its a weird time for artists right now. The emergence of AI generated content is getting crazier and crazier. The first few inceptions of AI image generators were very interesting from a technical standpoint. I thought it was cool, but it had so many flaws with it, that I didn’t consider it any sort of threat to artists. Now the images and video its able to produce is absolutely mind blowing. Now I feel for artists and the threat of being replaced by these quick image generating solutions. I’m really hoping that people still see the importance of a real artist, and all the emotions, inspirations and genuine feelings they pour into their work. There is definitely soul lacking from AI generated images. Best thing people can do right now is continue to support actual artists who truly care and obsess over their creations. If you ever have a project that needs artwork, hire a real artist :)

Alright – so here’s a fun one. What do you think about NFTs?

This seems to be a touchy subject for a lot of artists. Before I switched over to traditional painting full time, I did a lot of digital artwork for fun. Mostly 3d animations. There was no way to really monetize this kind of thing since there wasn’t anything physical about it. You couldn’t just sell and hang a 3d animation on the wall. SO, when the whole NFT thing came about, it naturally had an interesting angle to it that caught a lot of digital artists attention. Naturally though, with most good intentions, the greedy corporations, people, and bandwagon jumpers dove right in and essentially over saturated the entire space with low effort contributions and cash grabs, which inevitably turned the whole thing, which was originally kind of neat, into a total scam space that it is today. Any value that NFT’s might once have had is completely lost now and I wouldn’t recommend to anybody. I’m interested to see how or if it attempts to make another comeback in the future. My overall thoughts are that it had cool intentions at first but eventually ruined by greed and “get rich quick” schemers.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.flookart.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/flooko
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/FlookoTheArtist
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKDKtibZDMfbUaTIpwTG8nw

Image Credits
Nick “Flooko” Flook