Artist Feature: Nicholas Cordeiro, aka Dead Cowboy, in his Salem, Mass Studio
Nicholas Cordeiro is a Boston-based Contemporary Mixed Media artist meshing Cubism & Neo-Expressionism to explore Love, Trauma, & Self-Realization. We’ve been hanging out with Dead Cowboy for the past few months filming, creating art, and exploring Boston, so we wanted to share some photos and clips from our time with Nick. In this post, we’d like to introduce Nicholas Cordeiro, aka Dead Cowboy, to the FilterGrade Community.
Nick is a great artist and has such an immense talent for illustration, blending colors and ideas, and painting immersive and intriguing scenes. Check out his website to learn more and buy his art. Follow @deadcowboy.art on Instagram.
These photos are from a couple of studio visits to Nick and Suvad H.’s ‘office’ in Salem, MA. (An article on Suvad H. is on the way too!). We hung out and painted and talked about some ideas that have been on all of our minds. See more in the photos and clips below. All photography provided by Moloney Creative Agency.
So where do thoughts go?
A short video about thoughts, from our visit to Nick’s studio in August.
Full Bio
Nicholas Cordeiro is a Boston-based poet, designer, and artist who has spent the majority of his career working in financial software consulting.
Throughout his adolescence, Nicholas’ parents and siblings were not heavily involved in his life. Growing up was lonely and financially unstable, art was always an interest, but in terms of a career path, always an afterthought. Nick had no dreams of ‘being’ anything, financial stability was all that he wanted.
Nicholas is a First Generation college graduate, who studied Finance and Studio Art at Boston College. After Graduation, Nicholas accepted an offer from Oracle and began his career. Art was on the back burner until the pandemic hit. During this time, he felt a growing urge inside himself to create. He began with his own streetwear brand, Wrong Way.
Creating again inspired Nick to battle with past trauma, write poetry and most importantly, paint. Before 2021, Nick had only painted a handful of times. His previous works consisted of Graphite and Micron liner illustrations as his studies concentrated in drawing specifically.
In 2022, Nicholas began painting every day, in an effort to sharpen his style. After collaborating with other Boston based artists, Nicholas found himself at the forefront of the American Futurism movement.
INSPIRATION
For the last 3 years he has worked as a software consultant assisting C-Level executives optimize business practices while also having some great conversations along the way. In his art, he explores stories of love, trauma and self-realization. Most of his work is created from a stream of consciousness with proper intention and expressive stokes. Many of his works begin with a poem that is eventually painted over, beginning the cycle of creation and destruction at the beginning of each work.
His typical subject matter is often driven by fleeting emotion, past trauma, and self acceptance. His work is greatly influenced by Philosophy, Theology, and Transcendental Meditation.
Nicholas’ style can be described as a mesh between cubism and neo-expressionism that leverages undertones of surrealism and primitivism to depict a narrative. He is inspired by Charles Bukowski, Jean- Michel Basquiat, Salvador Dali & George Condo. In his chaotic and often emotional work he merges cubist principles, poetry and neo-primitivism to render a unique style of his own.
