Born near Sydney, Nicholas Manning studied literature, art history and painting in Brisbane on Australia’s east coast. He arrived in Paris at the age of 19 to pursue graduate studies at the ENS d’Ulm and the Sorbonne, culminating in a doctorate at the University of Strasbourg. He then lived in London and Rome before settling in Lyon in 2020. A lecturer at Grenoble Alpes University, the majority of his artistic practice is in oils, soft pastel, gouache and linocut.
Shaped by Symbolist, Fauvist and Nabi traditions, his aesthetic draws on a metaphysical yet playful imaginary. His fantastical landscapes, often populated by otherworldly beings, are not reflections of this world but echoes of a vibrant beyond, where hidden threats nevertheless lurk.
Influenced by the vibrant, colourful landscapes of Félix Vallotton, Marc Chagall and Maurice Denis, he also explores the power of narrative painting, whose remnants of rituals and stories remain ambiguous or incomplete. Through their recurring presence and opaque activities, the diminutive personnages who populate his works recall the distant scenes of Breughel and the Flemish school. In contemporary painting, he draws as much on the atmospheres of metaphysical mystery of Inka Essenhigh, Hurvin Anderson or Peter Doig, as on the faux-naïf of Craigie Aitchison or Karine Rougier.
His work is inspired by various currents of spiritual representation in art history – from pagan art to Orthodox icons and Greco-Latin frescoes – though it remains tied to no specific religious tradition. Influenced by the symbolism of Odilon Redon in France, Eugène Jansson in Sweden and Sidney Nolan in Australia, he seeks to capture the manifestations of an invisible world at the heart of our everyday materiality. The creatures, ghosts or spirits that float above these landscapes thus seem to occupy a liminal space, at the borders not only of waking and dreams, but the worlds of the living and the dead.
Resident artist at La Galerie-Ateliers L’Alcôve in Lyon, France since 2025, his works can be found on site at the gallery on the slopes of the Croix-Rousse and in private collections in Lyon, Paris, and the Mediterranean coast.
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