Nico Larravide
Nico is a contemporary fine artist based in Aberdeen, Scotland, whose practice is rooted primarily in painting. Currently studying BA (Hons) Fine Art at Gray’s School of Art, Robert Gordon University, his work explores deeply personal subjects including grief, memory, identity, family relationships and emotional experience.
Working predominantly with oil paint, Nico is drawn to colour, texture and atmosphere as ways of communicating feelings that can be difficult to express directly. His paintings often begin with personal experiences, photographs or memories before developing through experimentation with composition, surface and material. Alongside traditional painting methods, he frequently incorporates oil stick and expressive mark-making to create work that feels tactile, intimate and emotionally charged.
Throughout his developing practice, Nico has explored a range of subjects, from mental health and cycles of emotion to landscape, personal relationships and the experience of grief. One significant body of work focuses on the loss of a family pet and the absence that remains within familiar domestic spaces. Rather than simply documenting a subject, his work often considers the emotional traces people and animals leave behind and the ways memory can alter how a space, image or moment is experienced.
Nico’s practice continues to evolve as he moves towards increasingly autobiographical work, examining ideas surrounding upbringing, masculinity, family structures, love, rejection and the lasting influence of formative relationships. He is particularly interested in how individual experiences can be translated into images that remain open enough for viewers to connect with through their own memories and emotions.
Alongside his university practice, Nico has begun exhibiting his work through open calls and group exhibitions, including both painting and photography. His work has also expanded into commissioned pieces and limited-edition prints, allowing his practice to exist both within exhibition spaces and in more personal domestic settings.
As his artistic career develops, Nico aims to continue exhibiting, building larger and more ambitious bodies of work and establishing a sustainable professional practice alongside his studies. At the centre of his work remains an interest in making intensely personal experiences visible—using painting as a way of preserving memories, questioning relationships and giving physical form to emotions that might otherwise remain unspoken.
