Niark 1 And The Importance Of Monsters
Sébastien Feraut aka Niark1 is a Parisian who now lives and works in Montpellier. He has featured in many STICKERBOMB books and over the years we’ve seen his style evolve, embracing graffiti, street art, urban art as well as surrealism and psychedelia.
“The Woman-House”
Frame-by-frame experimental animation. Created with AI images mixed with scans of pieces of my drawings, paintings, and old magazines.
I’m inspired by so many things – it’s a bit difficult to list all my inspirations, but I’m inspired by several pictural and artistic movements. Surrealism, cubism, raw art, figuration libre, expressionism, primitive flemish … also by underground and alternative graphic scenes. African, Mexican, and Oceanian ethnic art is a big inspiration too. Also, I am a big fan of horror monster movies too! (my favourite one are the retro movies with cheap costume monsters).
I’ve been a big fan of monsters since I’m a young kid. I was always reading a lot about mythological stories about Egyptian and Greek gods and creatures and other folk tales and legends. And of course, like every child, I loved a lot of dinosaurs too. So I drew a bunch of monsters inspired by these stories.
I have always preferred to draw strange creatures than humans. There is no limit. You make everything you want depending on your imagination and then improvise any shapes possible. There are no morphological or logical rules. Also, monsters can represent a lot of real human emotions and tempers. So, to be succinct, I like to create monsters.
I actually started as a web designer at the beginning of 2000. I was working for a company but it became quickly boring so I decided to work on my own stuff.
It was not very easy at the beginning but with the internet, I had the possibility to show my personal work online and that has been a really good opportunity for me. During that time I was making a lot of flyer designs for electronic music parties.
The most difficult part (of being an artist) is having absolutely no idea about the future. Sometimes you have to face empty periods having no sales, orders, or just no inspiration. That could generate doubt and discouragement. That’s why you have to insist and never stop working.
