Nicole Tang was the designer of a 20ft mural on the world’s largest cruise ship, Royal Caribbean’s Icon of the Seas, which was launched in January 2024. She worked in collaboration with another talented local artist, Jason Hospedales on this endeavor. Nicole and Jason’s design was selected among over 100 applications of other talented artists in the Caribbean. Graced with the honor of this task, they travelled to Cadiz, Spain to execute this mural design on the 18th deck known as the Suite Sun Deck for VIP guests.
Artist in discussion with Jason Hospedales during the execution of a 20ft mural.
Notes from the designer
“This was one of the most iconic projects I have done to date. It was challenging. I spend long hours after midnight designing, redesigning and editing several designs, but everything was excellently and professionally presented to the team at Royal Caribbean. It’s been an honor to design for such a prestigious space, and to work with Jason.”
Nicole Tang
Behind the scenes design work and editing of the initial design proposal
One of the several prototype renderings done by Nicole of the design in the space on the Suite Sun Deck on Deck 18.
Nicole was approached by local artist, Jason Hospedales, to collaborate on this iconic project. He was looking for an artist/designer with the talent and skills to be able to bring his vision to life. She visited his art studio to see his collections of work and upon their discussions, she began to draft some designs. Jason gave her full creative freedom and creative license to deconstruct his works graphically. Using a handful of images of original paintings from Jason’s studio, she spend many hours crafting different design concepts.
Interestingly, in 2023, the artist was destroying her collections of about 100 paintings by cutting and tearing them into pieces. She took the pieces and created a series of large collages to retell a new story of of her artistic practice of fusing and weaving the old ideas with something new. In her attempt to reinvent herself artistically, most of her original paintings are no longer available as they were used in this endeavor. That makes the paintings bought by different art collectors from her different collections even more special! You can see the Reinvention collection here. This was the main inspiration in the creative process and designing of an iconic masterpiece.
“It was indeed interesting that the design approach for the mural was similar to the deconstruction of my own studio work, except it was done graphically using images of Jason Hospedales’ paintings. Jason indicated certain elements, motifs and textures he wanted me to extract from his paintings, playing with a central image that set the atmosphere for the entire work. The design is complex with layers of imagery.”
— Nicole Tang
Behind the scenes on Deck 18 of the Suite Sun Deck on Icon of the Seas. The artist was in the process of making stencils to create mirrored images of parts of the design to achieve symmetry. Stuck on the wall is pieces of plastic that were used as tracing paper to trace shapes.
“ICONIC“
“This is the word I would use to describe my experience on this project. Now completed on the VIP Suite Sun Deck of Icon of the Seas on Deck 18, this masterpiece I designed using the art works of Jason Hospedales, is an iconic and original work of art that was crafted with great skill. Beautiful layers of textures, colors ad images show great techniques used in the execution of this work. Without a doubt the creative process and journey was a rewarding one. Representing Trinidad and Tobago and gracing a prestigious space with this unique creative expression is an honor.”
NICOLE TANG 