David Mankin | Sightlines
24 August – 21 September 2019
David Mankin
Over the Marble Meadow
acrylic & mixed media on paper
23 x 31cm
David Mankin
Down Cloudy Cliffs
acrylic & mixed media on canvas
60 x 60cm
David Mankin
Drift
acrylic & mixed media on canvas
102 x 102cm
David Mankin
Serpentine Summer
acrylic & mixed media on canvas
122 x 122cm
David Mankin
West Penwith
acrylic & mixed media on canvas
95 x 120cm
David Mankin
Restless Land
acrylic & mixed media on wood
40 x 40cm
David Mankin
Embark
acrylic & mixed media on wood panel
40 x 30cm
David Mankin
Between Parched Dunes and Salivating Waves
acrylic & mixed media on canvas
60 x 60cm
David Mankin
Evening Sea Swims In
acrylic & mixed media on canvas
76 x 76cm
David Mankin
Out of the Hurling Air
acrylic & mixed media on canvas
102 x 102cm
David Mankin
Porthgwidden
acrylic & mixed media on canvas
102 x 102cm
David Mankin
Wayfarer
acrylic & mixed media on canvas
102 x 102cm
David Mankin
Vaulting Sky
acrylic & mixed media on canvas
102 x 102cm
David Mankin
The Sky Widens
acrylic & mixed media on canvas
102 x 102cm
David Mankin
Far Out Faintly Rocked
acrylic & mixed media on wood panel
50 x 50cm
David Mankin
Go in the Sea’s Roar
acrylic & mixed media on canvas
80 x 80cm
David Mankin
In the Sea Roads of the Moor
acrylic & mixed media on canvas
60 x 60cm
David Mankin
Arching Blue
acrylic on cradled wood panel
20 x 20cm
David Mankin
Encounter
acrylic & mixed media on canvas
40 x 50cm
David mankin
Dawn Breaks Loose
acrylic & mixed media on paper
50 x 50cm
David Mankin
Haul
acrylic & mixed media on paper
35 x 40cm
David Mankin
Under High Cliffs
mixed media on paper
21 x 21cm
David Mankin
Tintagel 3
acrylic & mixed media on paper
29 x 23cm
David Mankin
Tintagel 2
acrylic & mixed media on paper
29 x 26cm
David Mankin
Turned by the Wind
acrylic & mixed media on canvas
40 x 40cm
David Mankin
Up Granite Slopes Down to Coves
acrylic on cradled wood panel
20 x 20cm
David Mankin
Trampling Surf
acrylic on cradled wood panel
20 x 20cm
David Mankin
Slapping the Sunny Cliffs
acrylic on cradled wood panel
20 x 20cm
David Mankin
Petrel-Threaded Gale
acrylic on cradled wood panel
20 x 20cm
David Mankin
Over the Waltzing Sea
acrylic & mixed media on paper
23 x 24cm
David Mankin
Morvah
acrylic on cradled wood panel
20 x 20cm
David Mankin
Distant Morsels
mixed media on paper
21 x 21cm
David Mankin
Out of the Hurling Air (study)
mixed media on paper
21 x 21cm
David Mankin
Gone on Swallow’s Wings
mixed media on paper
21 x 21cm
David Mankin
Winter’s Flame
acrylic & mixed media on paper
29 x 31cm
David Mankin
Rendezvous
acrylic & mixed media on canvas
60 x 60cm
David Mankin
Perran Sands
acrylic & mixed media on canvas
102 x 102cm
David Mankin
On Sailing Roofs
acrylic & mixed media on paper
21 x 21cm
David Mankin
Sennen
acrylic & mixed media on paper
21 x 21cm
David Mankin
The Breezes Blew, the White Foam Flew
acrylic & mixed media on paper
21 x 21cm
David Mankin
By the Sounding Sea
acrylic on cradled panel
20 x 20cm
David Mankin
Uprush
acrylic & mixed media on wood panel
30 x 40cm
David Mankin
Call of the wild (study)
acrylic & mixed media on paper
32 x 42cm
David Mankin | Sightlines | 24th August – 21st September 2019
A new collection of 60 paintings and works on paper by one of Cornwall’s most exciting emerging abstract expressionist painters.
Since David’s near sell-out solo show at Cornwall Contemporary in 2018, he has received commissions including a highly prestigious national campaign from English Heritage to produce a painting for their 2019/20 Members Handbook, now available at over 400 historic sites such as Stonehenge. A documentary was made by English Heritage about David and we will screen this throughout the exhibition.
A special 28 page fully illustrated catalogue is available to accompany this exhibition, featuring paintings in the exhibition and information about the artist.
Priced at £10 in the gallery or £12.50 inc p&p (message us for overseas price)
Remembering in paint
‘A painter is a kind of beachcomber’ Peter Lanyon
David Mankin’s work is about the pulse of the landscape. There is no attempt to mimic a pretty ‘view’, instead he explores the elemental impermanence of the unique Cornish topography. Mankin’s work goes beyond its obvious beauty and delves into the minutiae of rock pools on the foreshore, the incoming squall, the lash of a wave, the formation of lichen on granite. Emotion, drama, and his own personal love for the landscape surrounding his Cornish home and studio are present and connect you to his sense of place, but the work is never allowed to be sentimental. It expresses the fleeting nature of the elements; it surrounds natural concurrences or ‘happenings’ that the artist himself has found like an expert beachcomber.
In this new body of work, Mankin explores how our overlapping senses respond to being in the landscape. For the artist, landscape is something to be felt all the way through, exploring it bodily, seeing with touch, smell and sound. His fascination lies in how our minds are shaped by this sensory experience. The constantly moving texture of images and viewpoints offer him the unexpected: two natural aspects overlapping, folding into each other like rock layers; slides of a projector slotting into place to create a moment of creative clarity — his own sightline.
Moments of sensory experience are constantly recorded by sketch, photograph, but mostly memory, and then reconstructed back in his studio. Mankin explains, ‘I start off with an explosion of mark making, sensory fragments that I’ve picked up in the landscape.’ Often his starting point is a connection with a particular shape, colour concurrence, or an overwhelming feeling that overtakes and is allowed to spill out onto canvas. The initial, intuitive flow is followed by a considered process of refinement. Thought is given to balance in colour, line, tone, texture, and shape. The artist is committed to finding equilibrium within his composition, with dialogue between mark-making and passages of paint. Mankin then goes through a process of addition and subtraction: the surface is built up, scratched, removed, scraped, and further layers added, all punctuated by marks and lines and graffiti-like scribble. The surface becomes animated as historical layers are allowed to seep through.
In the space of one day, a painting may change completely, as elements or relationships are discovered. Buried glimpses of previous iterations echo the dark, abandoned lodes beneath the earth; the soaring flight of a gull on a windy day, becomes a sweeping brush mark; a tangle of fine sgraffito lines suggests the wind-blown branches of tamarisk at a cliff edge. Always, there is the underlying energy of the sea; at times an early morning milkiness, at others a raging elemental force. It is these senses or impressions that are inherent to Mankin’s work.The artist draws on these moments whilst working on his canvases. He is remembering in paint.
There is a delicate balance between realism and abstraction in Mankin’s paintings which leaves the viewer to look for the apparent within the abstract, compounding the compelling nature of his work. It was this reason that led to English Heritage selecting him to create a painting for the cover of their 2019/ 20 members handbook, the guide to over 400 of their historic sites such as Stonehenge and Hadrian’s Wall. Mankin was commissioned to create his response to the iconic Cornish landmark, Tintagel Castle, a spectacular headland situated on the North Cornish Coast, attracting 250,000 visitors each year. The final piece titled ‘Passage’, is a painting that not only embodies his experience of Tintagel but also his ability to expertly communicate a sense of place.
Mankin’s paintings possess a powerful and compelling integrity, where his relationship between place and particular moments in time are being constantly explored. Words cannot convey their subtleties, they need to be seen ‘in the flesh’. One needs to stand in front of his paintings, taste the salt spray, smell the wild gorse on the cliff edge and feel the roaring Atlantic winds blasting the granite headlands.
Sarah Brittain-Mansbridge
Director, Cornwall Contemporary
English Heritage produced a documentary about David Mankin’s work to coincide with their commission for him to produce the image for their 2019/20 Members Handbook.
You can view the documentary here
