In 1975, he took part in the first exhibition of Kyiv nonconformist artists. At the beginning of his creative path, he worked in graphics and figurative painting, but from the late 1980s he consistently turned to abstract art, which became the basis of his artistic practice. In 1992, he joined the art association "Picturesque Reserve", which played an important role in the development of Ukrainian non-figurative painting in the 1990s.

Mykola Kryvenko's work is distinguished by a restrained color scheme, a minimalist plastic language and a desire to convey the inner state through the interaction of color, space and light. The leading motifs of his works are natural elements - water, air, snow, wind and grass, which become a means of understanding space and time. In addition to painting and graphics, the artist works with sculpture, collage, and is also the author of art history texts, in particular the essay "What Hryhoriy Gavrylenko Gave Me".

Since the mid-2000s, he has been teaching drawing and painting at the Kyiv National University of Civil Engineering and Architecture. His works are kept in the National Art Museum of Ukraine, the National Taras Shevchenko Museum, the Khmelnytsky Museum of Contemporary Art, the Serhiy Parajanov Museum in Yerevan, as well as in numerous private collections. He lives and works in Kyiv.