Nicolas Makelberge’s approach to painting doesn’t begin with a plan. It begins with pressure. Emotional. Intuitive. Material. He paints the way others might compose music: by responding to shifts in tone, tension and space. “The moment I try to force it,” he says, “the work disappears. I have to stay just behind it, not ahead.”
His paintings for Audo House sit quietly. Layered and tonal, they don’t call for attention — they absorb it. “I spent time with Audo’s materials, their colours, the architecture. I wanted to absorb the atmosphere, then forget it. So the work could grow out of that memory, not mimic it.” The result is a series that carries rhythm more than image. Colour used like chord, texture like tempo. “I think about painting like music,” he says. “Each brushstroke has a frequency. You want harmony, not noise.”
Restraint is central to Nicolas’s language. But it wasn’t always. “When I was younger, I thought more was more. Now, I find the greatest beauty in simplicity. Negative space lets the work breathe.” That discipline is felt in the surfaces, some opaque, others washed out. “There’s no undo button. Like editing a film, you keep what serves the story,” he adds.
Despite having roots in abstraction, the emotion in Nicolas’ art is specific. The acrylic-on-canvas paintings suggest landscapes or horizons. Stillness, but not static. “I don’t set out to create calmness,” he says. “But I think it comes through. In a world of constant stimulation, we crave that pause, that exhale.”
And while his paintings don’t speak loudly, they stay. “They’re not about telling a story, but about holding space. That quiet relationship is what I care about most. Art becomes a witness. Over time, it gathers meaning — not through explanation, but through presence.”
