Nicolas Barrome Forgues — Paris, France

“I like representing happy or stupid characters doing horrible things. The best moment for me is when somebody is looking at one of my pictures, saying ‘ohh look at this cute vegetable!!’ And after three seconds, the same person says ‘ohh, but it is cutting the head off this dog, this is bad!’ A lot of my pictures look really joyful at first sight but they are definitely not when you concentrate on the details..” I like mixing reality and science fiction. I like giving life to biscuits and vegetables; mixing realistic animals with strange martians.”

Nicolas Barrome was born in Saint Jean de Luz in 1980. He grew up in the Basque country and made his debut in School of Applied Arts in Bordeaux, before launching illustration collective Jeanspezial with his friends. Passionate about cinema and staging, obsessed with frames and textures, his world is made of detailed, often complex images, mixing all kinds of hairy animals, squinting dogs, giant octopus, giving life to fruits and vegetables and everything in between.