Many people don’t think that music has colour and can be painted.
Nico Pooko, an artist originally from KwaThema, goes around the world to paint music live.
He was earlier this year invited to exhibit and represent South Africa at the Kampala Art Biennale in Uganda.
Included in the invitation was that he had to paint live on stage at the closing ceremony to document the month-long proceedings of the biennale.
He has taken into the concept of painting live on stage a while ago, capturing the proceedings of an event, performance and “art-mosphere” of a function as it happens in real time.
“This concept has grown into the trend of me being invited to document prestigious events around the country, Africa and around the globe.” says Nico.
He had been overseas far more times than he can remember, doing what he loves.
Believing he was born as an artist, he describes his type of art as the art of making music and the music of making art.
He studied after school at the Johannesburg Art Foundation and established his style through the years.
His inspiration to make beautiful paintings is music, any type of music.
Nico says paints the abstract semi-figures as he sees it in the music and uses the colour in relation to the music.
“Each note of music is a stroke of my paint brush,” says he.
“Music is not in a box, but meaningful and powerful and can be used in many ways,” says Nico.
He uses acrylics to make his paintings, as this dries quickly and tells his story faster.
When Nico is not telling an art music story live, he loves to visit his family in KwaThema and to be with his wife Bantse and children Marang (14) and Mpilo (7).
