Nichola Manners: Echoes of Memory, Resilience, and Identity

Featured Artist – Chinwe Russell Contemporary Christmas Art Auction

There are artists whose work you encounter and immediately feel a familiar pulse , a kinship of spirit, colour, and storytelling. Nichola Manners is one of those artists. When I first saw her paintings, I recognised something instantly: the bold characters, the unapologetic colour blocks, the emotional directness, the quiet dignity. Her work speaks a language that resonates deeply with my own practice, narrative, rooted, and profoundly human.

In this year’s Chinwe Russell Christmas Art Auction, I am delighted to present the evocative work of Nichola Manners, an artist whose voice emerges directly from lived experience, generational memory, and the enduring legacy of the Windrush story.

A Visual Testament to the Windrush Legacy

Nichola’s paintings form a moving trilogy that captures the emotional architecture of Black British life , memory, identity, tenderness, and survival. Each work is a standalone narrative, yet together they create an interwoven tapestry of heritage, struggle, beauty, and resilience.

A Good Wig & A Hot Comb

This piece pays homage to the Black women of the Windrush generation , women who altered their hair, their appearance, and sometimes their very expression of identity in order to navigate a society that questioned their right to belong. Nichola paints them not as victims of expectation, but as carriers of dignity. Their rituals , the wig, the hot comb , become symbols of adaptation and cultural perseverance. The warmth of the palette honours these women with reverence and gratitude.

Blues Party

In deep blues and vibrant energy, Nichola transports us into the heart of the legendary Blues parties created by Caribbean communities in Britain ,sacred spaces born out of exclusion, joy, and need. Here, music becomes memory, escape, and collective identity. This work celebrates the ingenuity of a community that built its own stages when doors were closed, its own joy when joy was denied.

Lip Push Up, Don’t Cry

Perhaps the most tender of her pieces, this painting captures a moment of profound maternal care: a mother supporting her child’s head gently with the universal gesture of “Be strong.” A single tear marks the daughter’s face. The scene holds the emotional weight carried by generations , the pressure to remain resilient in a world that too often demanded silence. Nichola paints this with a delicate balance of vulnerability and courage, a tribute to Black motherhood as a quiet but unbreakable force. (I particularly love this piece)

An Artist Shaped by Lived Experience

Nichola Manners is not simply creating portraits; she is translating generational memory into colour, shape, and gesture. Being the granddaughter of a Windrush immigrant, she carries stories that were whispered, endured, and survived. Her figures exist between worlds , rooted yet floating, bold yet fragile. Their oversized eyes are windows into histories that are still unfolding. They ask the viewer to see, to acknowledge, to witness.

Her work marries emotional honesty with symbolic colour , blues for memory and melancholy, reds and oranges for fire and endurance, neutrals for grounding. Each stroke holds a personal truth, yet speaks universally to migration, belonging, mental health, trauma, and the quiet triumph of simply continuing.

Her Participation in This Auction

Having Nichola in this Christmas edition of the auction is profoundly meaningful. Her work adds honesty, storytelling, depth and emotional gravity to the collection, a reminder that art is not only aesthetic; it is testimony. What she brings is not performative or embellished. It is real, lived, textured with history and feeling.

This auction offers her an opportunity to share these narratives with new collectors, new audiences, and new communities who may not yet understand the emotional landscape of the Windrush generations. Through her work, she keeps these stories visible, alive, and impossible to ignore.

For me as curator, it is a privilege to showcase an artist who paints with such honesty and cultural clarity. Nichola’s art honours her community while expanding our own understanding of identity, belonging, and resilience.

Her voice is essential , and I am proud to present it.

Explore more of her work at: www.nicholamanners.com