Artist Nick Goettling Faces Off with Some Big, Scary Problems

Styracosaurus

Seattle-based visual artist Nick Goettling has been to prison and he's struggled with his religious upbringing (faith did not win that battle, a particularly bitter fight). At only 26, when he turns to his artwork, he asks himself - "How do you accurately describe, and cope, with that kind of personal turmoil?"

Using watercolor, graphite sketches and gouache, Goettling fuses remnants of those experiences into often bizarre settings where the monstrous meets the human, the prehistoric battles the modern world and the organic melds with the industrial.

Within these far off places (inspired by Bible illustrations, a fascination with science and his dad's Frank Frazetta book covers), there is isolation, grit and transformation.

Scumbeard's Revenge

"Everyone has crisis, but we so often think ours are a little bigger, a little toothier, than what everyone else is dealing with," he says, "These are conflicts that my gut understands better than my intellect. I take the only archetypes that seem big, dumb, but honest enough to articulate my [personal] incomprehension."

While most people would be guilty of making their problems seem more terrible than they are, not everyone, however, can square off so directly with them as Goettling does. 

Salvage Diver

See more of Nick's work at his Web site Nickalas.com and Etsy.com.