Biography

Nicolas Lehoux (aka Leou, aka ‘Kola) is an inspired cartoonist. Radical and uncompromising, his art expresses the Absolute, Beauty and the Creative Violence inhabiting him.  He blows up comics by pushing it to its limits; thus, he creates a universal visionary language, close to that of the Egyptians and Mayas, in order to express the essence of beauty. His genius seems still unintelligible to his contemporaries, but this doesn’t stop him from creating new artwork and signing it with a hyperbolical confidence.

Multidisciplinary artist, inspired mystic, writer and director of the Jovialist Movement, Nicolas Lehoux teaches the way to be happy in the present and sensitive to the invisible. He has published nine comic books, recorded one CD, created more than a hundred paintings (geatured in his album entitled Transparence) and has written two books not yet translated into English.

 

The art of Leou is a jovialist art, an art of here & now, an art of awakening.


Nicolas Lehoux was born in 1975 in Québec, Canada. At 10, he began making comics. Around 15, Leou gets published in professional fanzines in Quebec and Europe. End of adolescence, he starts painting and begins collaborating with scriptwriter Stéphane Turgeon. Together, they create The Poutine Family and The Troglodytes, two comics series, the first humoristic and the latter experimental, in a dynamic and original style, still close to European comics. At this stage, Nicolas is published in professional magazines and other publications.

At 20, he brings a significant change to his art: with a clear line technique, intuitive and spontaneous, he creates Abstractions. He gets rid of text and focuses on pure visual poetry. At last, he can render the invisible visible and is able to concretely manifest his interior world, with a rapid movement oscillating between symbolism and abstraction. In parallel, his paintings of this period become more and more abstract. His interests for publicity and marketing lead him to a Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration, at Laval University. During his studies Nicolas is very involved in Quebec’s comics community: he organizes comic-jams, self-publishes his work and creates a web site dedicated to underground comics and lowbrow art: UltraJambon.

At 23, Nicolas moves to Montreal, explores drawing techniques, and continues working on his comics and paintings, in a more radical and personal way. He paints numerous murals across the city, and starts writing songs and performing under the stage name of ‘Kola.

At 28, a significant change occurs, as the result of a series of mystical experiences that profoundly transforme his conception of art: he discovers the transcendental and visionary aspects of the creation process. He then devotes himself to the study and experimentation of psychedelics and consciousness. He starts painting mandalas, and his art becomes a way of consciously co-creating reality and thus transcending it.

At 32, he paints his series A being only has what resembles him composed of 12 realistic portraits representing the people closest to his essence. He looks at them through introspection; by painting them with the three faces of Brahma he evokes the presence of the divine in each of them and in himself. This series, which he considers to be a self-portrait, proves to be the best starting point in order to observe the immanence of being.

In 2009 he writes his first aphorisms book Le Bonheur Absolu (Absolute Happiness). He is now working on his next book: The Psychedelic Master. Nicolas has also been producing and hosting the Jovialist Cabaret since 2009.

His most recent projects – new episodes of Abstractions – inescapably bring him back toward his passion: comics. More than ever he feels it living in him.

Bibliography

Publications

- Transparence
- Abstractions 1
- Abstractions 2
- Abstractions 3
- Abstractions 4
- Abstractions 5
- Abstractions 6
- Abstractions 7
- La Famille Poutine
- Les Troglodytes, # 1


Magazines

- Logical Unsanity
- Erowid Extract, 2008
- 2Creation, 2007-2008

- Croc
, #186, January 1995
- Bédélirium1995, Les Editions Bédélirium, 1995
- Bédélirium, #1 to 4, Les Editions Bédélirium, 1996
- Safarir, #107 to 115, 1997

Collective albums

- Exil, Les Editions Amerisque,  #3 & #5
- Exil, Les Editions Mille-Îles, 2003
- Flirt, Les Editions Isabelle Stephen, 2003
- Exil, Les Editions Mille-Îles, 2006