On Nicole Michaud’s Quiet Painting

By ANNA SHUKEYLO, May 28th 2026

Outside Philadelphia, Manayunk’s Gross McCleaf Gallery in collaboration with Stanek Gallery presents a show of paintings by Nicole Michaud titled Cloud Gazing. For a child of the 80s, entering this vibrant gallery space is as thrilling as finding a treasure box of old polaroids, blurry, at times dark, and profoundly familiar. The muted tones and shadowed spaces create a sense of nostalgia that is both sentimental and haunting all at once. The imagery feels deeply personal although difficult to place exactly; the way memories surface in fragments rather than complete narratives. 

Installation view

Nicole's paintings are reminders of personal moments living inside one's head, a retreat into the viewer’s innermost thoughts and memories.  There is a quiet drama in her landscapes that evokes feelings of Vilhelm Hammershøi’s interiors. It’s similar in palette but the most striking similarity is their sense of presence without actual figures or at most mere  hints at figures. Besides the small self portrait at the entrance to the show, there are no confrontational pieces. The work is soft, muted, and human scale.     

Each painting is based on a dream sequence or a memory. Her work seems to linger in the psychological space between memory, emotion, and thought. The figures, environments, and colors often feel suspended in time, as if the viewer has stepped into someone’s stream of consciousness rather than a literal scene. Pieces such as Autumn Trees, 2025 and US-1, 2025 among many other outdoor scenes are based on real places but teeter on abstraction. The work functions almost like fragments of remembered feelings. The imagery may appear quiet or still, but beneath that calmness is an active emotional landscape. A sense of uncertainty, nostalgia, longing, and familiar comfort envelope these pieces. The paintings resemble moments when a person withdraws from the noise of the outside world and becomes absorbed in their own thoughts. 

These pieces are expertly composed with wispy brush strokes, translucent and fragile mylar material. The quality of the surface is similar to that of a frosted glass.The works intimately scaled. Michaud whispers in paint, she repaints and reworks the surface while scraping the paint on the smooth surface of mylar. The result is a very smooth and almost foggy look as if we're looking through a rain stained window. For instance Burning House, 2025, is one of those works, where a ghostly structure fades in the central composition as the darkness swallows it from the edges. Leaf Canopy, 2025, is another but in this case it feels like a snapshot of a memory running through the woods.

 Burning House, 2025, Oil on mylar, 4 x 5 inches

The figurative pieces from the dream sequence series reveal Nicole Michaud’s foundation in traditional academic painting, particularly the rigorous training she received at Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Michaud transforms these academic principles into something more psychological and atmospheric.The figures in the dream sequence series often appear suspended between reality and imagination, occupying spaces that feel emotionally charged rather than physically fixed. In Where Do Our Thoughts Go, 2025 and Touch, 2025, there is no particular identification to the figures. In the larger piece, all three nudes’ heads are blurred, seemingly reaching for nothing. Their poses, expressions, and interactions suggest fragments of dreams or memories, capturing the instability and fluidity of the subconscious mind. The smaller piece that measures only 5 inches by 5 inches is aptly-titled. It is so near-tangible, one can feel goosebumps from just looking at it.

Installation view

In a world full of big loud oil paintings Michaud’s show offers respite of small, contemplative work that is meant to be lived with and dreamt of. The importance of quiet work in a turbulent time serves as an anchor of stability as her paintings capture the fleeting nature of thought itself as well as moments that are difficult to explain verbally but instantly recognizable on an emotional level.

Nicole Michaud: Cloud Gazing

at Gross McCleaf Gallery, 123 Leverington Ave, Philadelphia, PA

In collaboration with Stanek Gallery

April 18 – May 30, 2026