The Growing Tree of Emotions: Nikolaos Schizas’ Ever-Evolving Series
Nikolaos Schizas, a Barcelona-based artist, has become one of the most prolific and sought-after abstract painters of his generation. Despite only beginning his professional career in 2020, Schizas has already produced over 550 works, selling an astonishing 450 pieces. His practice is deeply personal and meditative, providing balance and focus to channel his energy as someone with ADHD. Entirely self-taught, Schizas later refined his skills through mentorships with professional painters and a year at a drawing academy (Barcelona Drawing Academy ), where he developed his unique and dynamic style.
For Schizas, art is both a passion and a necessity. His approach is intuitive and exploratory, prioritizing authenticity over commercialism. While his Instagram reels once attracted thousands of followers every month, he chose to delete them to protect the originality of his techniques; A bold move to reaffirm his commitment to his craft over trends.
This article follows in-depth conversations with Schizas, and delves into his world, exploring his creative processes, inspirations, and personal journey. With candor and openness, Schizas shared the techniques and emotions behind his ever-evolving body of work, unveiling the profound connection between his artistic practice and his inner life.
Meditation and Reflection
For Schizas, art is deeply connected to his sense of balance and well-being. Painting serves as a form of meditation, a way to channel his energy and find focus. This connection extends beyond his studio practice—every year, he retreats to a remote Greek island for two weeks of solitude. During these retreats, he sketches, reflects, and gathers inspiration, reconnecting with the emotional and intuitive core of his work. This annual ritual underscores the meditative essence of his art, where each series reflects not only technical evolution but also personal growth.
Splash Painting: The Foundation of Spontaneity
Schizas’ professional artistic journey began in 2020 with splash painting, a technique rooted in spontaneity but requiring careful preparation. Working on wet white backgrounds, he pours layers of thinned acrylic paint onto the canvas and spreads it with sweeping gestures using brushes up to 30 cm wide. The wet surface is essential—it allows the paint to glide smoothly, resulting in dynamic, fluid forms. While splash painting may appear random, it involves meticulous planning to execute the gestures quickly before the canvas dries. Schizas often works on multiple canvases simultaneously, typically 146x114 cm or larger, laying them flat to maintain precision.
This technique, which he honed through experimentation, became his foundation.
It's not the end of the world by Nikolaos Schizas (2025)
Mastering Motion: The Power of Bold Brushstrokes
However, Schizas soon sought more control, moving away from randomness to deliberate brushstrokes. He began creating large, multicolored gestures using paint prepared on a glass surface to coat the large brush evenly. These strokes, spanning across two-thirds or more of the canvas, combine vibrancy and precision, often paired with areas of negative space for balance. This transition marked a significant evolution in his work, demonstrating his desire to refine his process while maintaining the energetic core of his practice.
Exotic Dreams (Left) & Butterfly Secrets (Right) by Nikolaos Schizas (2024)
Refined Control: The Ribbons Series
Emerging alongside Schizas’ large multicolored brushstroke works and parallel to his monochrome series described below, the Ribbons Series reveals a more introspective and calculated approach. This body of work retains the focus on brushstrokes but reduces their size to approximately 10 cm wide, allowing for greater precision and control.
The dynamic spontaneity of his earlier large brushstrokes is softened, replaced by deliberate gestures that prioritize intellectual and planned refinement over instinct. This transition represents an evolution toward quieter, more controlled compositions characterized by muted tones and meticulously crafted negative space, inviting invites contemplation through restraint, texture, and understated elegance.
Paciencia Y Inquietude (left) & Touch (Right) by Nikolaos Schizas (2024)
The Depth of All-Over Monochromes
As Schizas further explored his practice, he ventured into creating all-over monochromatic paintings.
Running parallel to the Ribbons Series, these works celebrate intensity through color immersion. They abandon multicolor compositions in favor of single hues—deep blues, greens, purples, and reds—applied with bold gestures and layered textures. While seemingly minimalistic, these pieces exude depth and complexity, with light and shadow interacting across their sculptural surfaces.
These works are meditative, inviting viewers to immerse themselves in their textured fields. By paring down his palette, Schizas amplifies the emotional resonance of each work, offering a calming yet powerful visual experience.
The Silence Under The Water by Nikolaos Schizas (2025)
Gestural Minimalism: Serenity in Metallics
Building on these monochromes, Schizas developed a series of gestural minimalist works, characterized by their ethereal elegance. In these pieces, he limits his brushstrokes to a small portion of the canvas, often no more than a third, leaving the rest as untouched negative space. The strokes are executed with a lighter touch, and the palette incorporates metallic tones such as zinc, bronze, graphite, and gold. These iridescent colors shimmer subtly, creating a soothing, almost otherworldly effect.
These works reflect Schizas’ ability to balance control and spontaneity, offering a sense of serenity. As one admirer noted at Context Miami 2024, where these works were featured in his first solo show, “they are the ideal paintings for a bedroom.” The understated elegance of this series marks a mature refinement of his process, showing his mastery of restraint.
The Morning After by Nikolaos Schizas (2024)
Playful Experimentation with "Sweeties"
While Schizas’ other series reflect refinement and control, the "Sweeties" series (as we call them at IdeelArt) offers a more playful and experimental side to his work. Retaining the bold, multicolored brushstrokes from his earlier pieces, these small-format works (typically 40x40 cm) introduce an additional element: sculpted gel. Applied over the brushstrokes and shaped with spatulas, the gel adds a tactile quality and introduces an element of unpredictability. Over time, the gel becomes transparent, revealing the vibrant underpainting beneath, a delayed "reveal" that makes the works evolve even after completion.
Schizas describes the Sweeties as a form of recreation, a joyful counterbalance to his more meditative works. Their smaller size and vibrant aesthetic make them particularly accessible to collectors, while their unique materiality ensures they remain distinctive within his body of work.
A True Story by Nikolaos Schizas (2024)
The Growing Tree Of Emotions
Schizas’ body of work can be visualized as a growing tree, with each series branching out from the foundation of his early splash paintings, and each providing viewers with different kinds of emotional reaction. Unlike artists who abandon past techniques while moving to the next one, Schizas nurtures all his series simultaneously. Each branch offers him something unique—some works are playful and rejuvenating, while others are deeply meditative and reflective.
His series evolve naturally, responding to his personal inspirations and emotions while also reflecting the demands of a growing collector base. A significant portion of his output now comes from commissions, allowing him to refine and perfect his various bodies of work. This interplay between artistic intention and market demand fuels the tree’s continued growth, with each branch contributing to his exploration of abstraction. As Schizas refines these paths, the tree not only expands but also deepens, promising a rich and evolving legacy.
The Next Chapter: Gradient Explorations
Schizas’ newest series explores gradient backgrounds, a technique using spray paint adapted from car-painting methods. These smooth, monochromatic transitions form a subtle yet striking base, adding depth and atmosphere to the works. Over these gradients, Schizas has reintroduced splashes of paint, blending the spontaneity of his early techniques with the precision of his newer methods.
In my opinion, this series feels like a transitional phase—a bridge to a future body of work that may move beyond the splash entirely. To the elaborate viewers, these gradients could suggest a shift toward a more immersive and refined exploration of color and texture, one that could mark another exciting evolution in his career…
Emergence (left) & Gradient 7 (right) by Nikolaos Schizas (2025)
A Relentless Drive to Innovate
Schizas’ work is a testament to the power of evolution. From splash painting to sweeping brushstrokes, monochromes, and beyond, each series builds on the last, exploring new possibilities while remaining true to his dynamic and expressive style. With a growing base of collectors, Schizas is not only prolific but also deeply committed to his craft. His journey as an artist is far from complete, promising even greater innovations in the years to come.
Click Here to discover Nikolaos Schizas’ works on IdeelArt, or check a selection below
