Plainly Painting – David Manley

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Paintings Standing Up…

David Manley Avatar
David Manley
beetlebum
Beetlebum, wood offcuts & acrylic, 2020

The continuing ‘lockdown’ is probably sending a lot of us a tad nutty…certainly I’m bouncing around the studio playing with all sorts.  This includes my growing collection of Paintings Standing Up that developed out of an earlier series TFTLR (Tales From The Lumber Room).  These scrappy little constructions have been littering the studio for several years and over the past week or two I’ve dusted some off, given them some TLC and given them titles.  So there’s now a ‘body’ of work (well seven or eight) to put up online.  The first and second are here now…

stockadeboozing
Stockade Boozing,wood offcuts & acrylic, 2020

One response

  1. Chris Kennedy

    Hello David
    I like your Paintings Standing Up. Who wouldn’t? I understand that process as I often find myself cannibalising and collaging my own work and using bits lying around. I’m sure you know about cabbage. When I left college I got a part time job driving a pink van from Oxford Circus in London for a wholesale garment firm. One of my jobs was to take rolls of cloth to a workshop near Post Office Tower run by a group of deaf people who used to cut the cloth according to the patterns supplied. They would try to minimalise the amount used for my firm’s patterns to leave them cloth to use themselves and make into their own designs – cabbage. One day I’m going to have a show called Authenticity and Cabbage.
    I started making work again in February and, as to be expected, the serious piece that I was working on got a bit turgid and dull and stopped working.
    But for St Valentine’s Day I made a card for Gill inspired by the poster for the Picasso and Paper show at the Royal Academy. I had some hanging pieces on thin card that I had made in Bristol and didn’t work at the time, but when I packed them up for the move to Dorset I recognised that there was something there, so I thought that I would attack them with the scissors. Suddenly by folding the card and cutting the base so that it would stand up I had something interesting. Though not like Picasso, more like the northern Spanish – Tàpies or Chillida.
    Only goes to show that a bit of play releases the mind. Also there was a deadline! Now I’ve gone back to some of the other Bristol pieces and with a small bit of scissors and knife they are expressing themselves quite well.
    As we are self-isolating, we had a vegetable box delivery recently. After removing the potatoes and the other kinds of potatoes (I am half Irish) the box sat around for a few days looking at me and in a few days I felt a challenge – to make some kind of art from this combination of broken, bent and rough wood. It was the usual cheap and bendy timber with hardboard ends and triangular cross section corners.
    Thing is, you cut yourself off from the world and you feel you can do what you like.
    So, at the moment, I have constructed two possibilities and a third one is on its way. It is a challenge but I feel, even as a vegetarian, that you should go the whole hog and use the squeak of the pig.
    Best wishes
    Chris Kennedy

    Reply

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