Nicolae Negura
- Anna Lilli Garai
- Nov 11
- 4 min read
Nicolae Negura is a Romanian-born artist living in Lisbon. He trained as an illustrator and created a visual style influenced by vintage comics. His work features strong outlines, flat colors, and clear gestures. As time passed, he moved his focus to painting and mixed media, leaving space for more personal stories. His art explores themes of intimacy, queer identity, and emotional vulnerability. Negura's ongoing project “LACEONI” started as an online alter ego and has developed into a series of paintings that look at desire, visibility, and the line between public and private life.
Q: Your figures often carry both tension and tenderness. What draws you to that emotional mix?
A: Currently, I’m focusing on more romantic and sexual themes related to queer male culture. I believe that within these connections, both tension and tenderness often coexist, sometimes even within the same gesture or glance.
On a more subconscious level, this reflects my own way of being. I tend to keep a protective layer between myself and daily interactions, a kind of self-defense mechanism that allows me to mask any vulnerability or sweetness when I feel the need to. I think this is a familiar scenario for many queer men, shaped by the need to navigate intimacy with both caution and longing.
Q: “LACEONI” began online and moved onto canvas. How did that shift change your relationship with the work?
A: The project began online, on Tumblr, as an anagram of my name, a space where I could express myself more freely as a gay artist, almost like an alter ego stepping out of the closet.
At first, “Laceoni” existed mainly in the digital realm, as I was presenting myself as a digital artist and illustrator. Gradually, as I changed studios and began working in more intimate spaces, including a home studio, the work naturally evolved onto canvas.
Now I share a studio again within a collective environment where people are constantly coming and going. That sense of openness somehow reinforces the spirit of Laceoni: the idea that none of this belongs in the closet anymore. Painting these works in a shared space feels liberating, as if the project itself encourages visibility and connection.
Q: There’s a comic-like clarity in your style, but the stories are deeply personal. How do you balance those two worlds?
A: Since I was a teenager, I’ve been fascinated by the language of comics, especially vintage ones. Growing up in Romania, many of the comics I encountered were in foreign languages, so I first connected to them visually rather than through words. That taught me to read stories through images and gestures.
Over time, I started creating my own visual narratives through clear comic visual language, often inspired by pop culture, cartoons, and media. This evolved into a way of telling personal stories about anxiety, love, and everyday life using the familiar clarity of comic aesthetics. The recognizable style draws viewers in, while the content allows me to explore much more intimate and emotional territory beneath the surface.
Q: When you paint about intimacy or desire, where does honesty end and imagination begin?
A: Until now, I’ve tried to avoid using real models or people I personally know. I wanted the intimacy to feel universal, for anyone to be able to see themselves in it. If I based my work too much on real individuals, I think it would distract from the emotional core, the shared feeling of desire and connection.
So honesty, for me, lies in the emotion rather than the likeness. Of course, imagination begins the moment I start shaping the character in my mind as a point of desire. That process allows me to build a sense of attraction and connection that is emotional rather than physical, transforming imagination into a tool for expressing something deeply human and true.
Q: Do you see painting as a kind of self-preservation or more as exposure?
A: I think, at this moment, it’s a bit of both, but my recent work leans more toward exposure.
In the past, my art was a way to preserve myself, to create a bridge with viewers through beautiful imagery that spoke openly about the mundane, anxiety, and depression.
Now, I’m more interested in showing the parts of myself that I used to hide or wasn’t always allowing myself to be. Some of the relationships and experiences that shaped me were deeply supportive, while others were more complicated. Painting now feels like reclaiming space for myself, a way to exist more freely and to reveal, rather than protect, who I am.
Q: What’s something that still surprises you about your own process?
A: The way it keeps evolving. Every time I paint, I discover something new. It could be a brushstroke, a texture, or a small, unexpected detail. I’ve always loved working with color, but I’m still in awe of how it behaves, how different tones interact and create moods or tensions I didn’t plan for. That sense of surprise keeps the process alive for me.
