Nicole Mathieu, known as "Niko", was born in Montreal into a family of artists. She worked in the fashion world in California and New York, but always knew she would become a painter.
Her nomadic character led her to travel all over Europe and allowed her to evolve in different spheres of activity until 1988. Upon her return to Montreal, she took therapeutic art classes with Nicole Bolduc, and it was then that her passion for painting became established. From this period, Niko perfected her knowledge of painting. She attended the Renaissance School of Fine Arts and she also perfected her skills in drawing at the Saidye Bronfman school and studied portraiture in particular. From this period, Niko devoted every minute of her daily life to painting, which gave her stability, discipline and artistic balance.
Niko draws her energy from meditation and yoga, and transposes it into her canvases in the form of raw colors. Her art is continually expressive, complex and sensual. Creating represents for her a passion that balances her. She likes to deconstruct precision with her brushes and explore the multiple possibilities of the abstract and the figurative through her personal vision, with the aim of exposing the vitality and energy that resides in us.
A versatile and contemporary artist, Niko is animated by an ardent joie de vivre that permeates her colourful, surprising and mysterious works. Drawing inspiration from her travels around the world, NIKO has the ability to renew herself while continuing to reveal the androgynous and enigmatic faces that characterize her rich and colorful artistic universe.