Nick Bridge is a Chicago based painter whose focus on urban themes has shifted in recent years to include figurative work that explores the aging process. His work raises such questions as: As we age, do our identities become more locked into place? Do we become more attuned to the essential? Are we more alone?

His current series of individuals working out started as an attempt to avoid the narrative content and sentimentality that accompanies much figurative work. Instead of being erased, however, a whole new narrative opened up with questions such as what the aging experience holds and why so many nowadays continue to engage in intense physical activity long after their primes.

The artist choses to paint individuals who are middle aged because to him their bodies are more interesting. The spare tire, the ripple, the wrinkle, the extra dab of fat he calls badges of survival, particularly when sported by someone still actively engaged in robust physical activity. The attraction of the youthful ideal sought in models becomes tempered by the growing realization of just how temporary that "ideal" state is and how much most contemporary Americans deviate from it.

He also finds an interesting dialectic between the society as a whole as it collectively grows more obese and those aging individuals who persist in the complex dance of trying to remain fit while ultimately giving ground to physical decline.

Nick Bridge is the recipient of many awards among them the Portrait of Illinois Competition. His work has been exhibited in many galleries and art institutions throughout the Unites States including the Stolen Buick Gallery and Plan B Gallery in Chicago, IL. His work is in many individual, corporate and public collections such as Barks Publishing Company, the Village of Glen Ellyn and Illinois State Library. It has appeared in the movie “Watch It” starring Peter Gallagher and in the television show “Prison Breaks.”