David Mankin
28 August – 25 September 2021
David Mankin
The Nightfisherman (study)
acrylic & mixed media on paper
21 x 25cm
David Mankin
Sennen Cove
acrylic & mixed media on canvas
102 x 102cm
David Mankin
Back Road West
acrylic & mixed media on wood
60 x 80cm
David Mankin
Wild Breath of Storms
acrylic & mixed media on canvas
50 x 50cm
David Mankin
Revielle
acrylic & mixed media on wood
36 x 28cm
David Mankin
Inside Dawn’s Light
acrylic & mixed media on wood
40 x 30cm
David Mankin
Cadgwith (study)
acrylic & mixed media on paper
24 x 26cm
David Mankin
Ding Dong Dawn
acrylic & mixed media on canvas
102 x 102cm
David Mankin
Bolerium – Seat of Storms
acrylic & mixed media on canvas
160 x 180cm
David Mankin
Race the Rising Wind
acrylic & mixed media on canvas
102 x 102cm
David Mankin
Summons from the Sea
collaged acrylic & mixed media on paper
42 x 33cm
David Mankin
The sea is stretched like silk
collaged acrylic & mixed media on paper
27 x 35cm
David Mankin
The Nightfisherman
acrylic, mixed media & collaged flotsam on canvas
122 x 152cm
David Mankin
Night of the Tempest
acrylic & mixed media on canvas
102 x 102cm
David Mankin
St Ives
acrylic & mixed media on canvas
102 x 102cm
David Mankin
To lands of summer across the sea
acrylic & mixed media on canvas
80 x 80cm
David Mankin
Where Crested Surges Roar
acrylic & mixed media on paper
28 x 28cm
David Mankin
White sail of a gull crosses the blue
acrylic & mixed media on paper
27 x 27cm
David Mankin
High Zennor
acrylic & mixed media on paper
28 x 32cm
David Mankin
Sing of the Shore
acrylic, mixed media & collaged flotsam on canvas
102 x 102cm
David Mankin
The Sea Streaming
acrylic, mixed media & collaged flotsam on canvas
102 x 102cm
David Mankin
Darkening Embers
acrylic & mixed media on paper
26 x 30cm
David Mankin
Trebarvah
acrylic & mixed media on paper
25 x 20cm
David Mankin
Dream-Heavy Land
acrylic & mixed media on wood
36 x 28cm
David Mankin
Out of the Murmuring Cove
acrylic & mixed media on paper
23 x 23cm
David Mankin
Pebbled Shallows
acrylic & mixed media on paper
21 x 21cm
David Mankin
Mousehole
acrylic & mixed media on paper
21 x 21cm
David Mankin
Gorse Hatted Hills
acrylic & mixed media on paper
23 x 23cm
David Mankin
Quiet the Beach Lies
acrylic & mixed media on paper
21 x 21cm
David Mankin
Through the dark azure of the night
acrylic & mixed media on paper
21 x 21cm
David Mankin
The shore looked wild without a trace of man
acrylic & mixed media on paper
21 x 21cm
David Mankin
Bergs of clouds
acrylic & mixed media on cradled wood panel (unframed)
20 x 20cm
David Mankin
Dance upon the shining sand
acrylic & mixed media on cradled wood panel (unframed)
20 x 20cm
David Mankin
Departure
acrylic & mixed media on cradled wood panel
20 x 20cm
David Mankin
Fisherman’s Moon
acrylic & mixed media on cradled wood panel (unframed)
20 x 20cm
David Mankin
Glistening Waves and Skies
acrylic & mixed media on cradled wood panel (unframed)
20 x 20cm
David Mankin
Kenidjack
acrylic & mixed media on cradled wood panel (unframed)
20 x 20cm
David Mankin
Kynance, Wilderness
acrylic & mixed media on cradled wood panel (unframed)
20 x 20cm
David Mankin
Presage
acrylic & mixed media on cradled wood panel (unframed)
20 x 20cm
David Mankin
Reverie
acrylic & mixed media on cradled wood panel (unframed)
20 x 20cm
David Mankin
Singing Surf
acrylic & mixed media on cradled wood panel (unframed)
20 x 20cm
David Mankin
Sounding Seas Wash Far
acrylic & mixed media on cradled wood panel (unframed)
20 x 20cm
David Mankin
Star Filled Seas
acrylic & mixed media on cradled wood panel (unframed)
20 x 20cm
David Mankin
The Tinners
acrylic & mixed media on cradled wood panel (unframed)
20 x 20cm
David Mankin
Where rainbows haunt the horizon
acrylic & mixed media on cradled wood panel (unframed)
20 x 20cm
David Mankin
Wondrous cliffs were polished by waves
acrylic & mixed media on cradled wood panel (unframed)
20 x 20cm
David Mankin
As the Tide Sweeps In
acrylic & mixed media on paper
21 x 21cm
David Mankin | Encounters 28th August – 25th September 2021
‘David Mankin is one of the the most exciting Abstract Expressionist painters to emerge in recent years. There is something momentously appealing and emotive about his paintings. His unique perspective on the Cornish landscape manages to provoke more depth of feeling, emotion, and excitement amongst art collectors and admirers than most other artists I know’
Sarah Brittain-Mansbridge Director, Cornwall Contemporary
‘Remembering in Paint’ the book about David Mankin can be purchased in person at the gallery.
The Cornish landscape infects the mind. There are few places which contain such a tangible personality: the capricious nature of the sea, sky, and elements, vacillating from bright and clear, to dark and foreboding within a moment. It is this swing that Mankin finds so arresting; how the changeability of the weather transforms the visual and visceral experience of this wild, ancient place. It allows him glimpses, small chance occurrences, moments of clarity: the sweet smell of yellow gorse, the flight of a gull on a summer’s day, the darkness of a winter storm, the muted jades of autumn sea. These sensory catalogues of contrast in form, colour, texture, mood, spatial relationships, and emotion fuel and propel Mankin’s work. He states, ‘from a painter’s perspective, the juxtaposition is so enticing. It feels primal and raw and physical, but also beautiful and serene.’ These disparate encounters and minute experiences are strung together visually to create a sense of place. Mankin collects and layers these occurrences within his paintings. They rove over different sightlines and perspectives, bringing us the big and the small, the rough and the smooth, the fluid and the geological.
There is a poeticquality to the way Mankin surveys and absorbs the Cornish landscape. He searches for and amasses visual encounters to describe the experience and emotions of a time and a place. When Mankin carries these back to his studio, both physically and psychologically, he will unleash them on to his canvases like a poet stringing together metaphors. ‘As a painter every day is an encounter, not only with the canvas you’re working on, but with the materials, the choice of colour, the paint application, and the tools. My process is one of intuition, change, transition, improvisation, embracing accidents and taking risks, to see how far I can take a painting.’
Mankin’s process from landscape to canvas generates a series of experiments and discoveries. He is continually searching for an equilibrium between the formal qualities of the painting and the experience he is transcribing. The initial explosion of mark making, free association, and gestural paintwork is Mankin’s response to the emotional pull of the Cornish landscape. He will then temper this energy through periods of continuous refinement and analytical thinking, using each new encounter with the painting to balance colour, texture, and composition.
This exhibition is named Encounters because it describes exactly Mankin’s relationship with painting. An ‘encounter’ implies an element glimpsed in the landscape, the shape of a stone or the colour of turned earth, whilst simultaneously reflecting a developing conversation with the materials, as a representation of the creative process. Mankin’s paintings feel both experienced and built, engaging the viewer on two levels. His paintings transport the viewer into the fray of his dynamic Cornish landscapes, whilst involving them with a thoughtful and roving surface. We can see where Mankin has built up, scratched back, changed direction, moved forward, pulled away. The painting’s history and rhythms are tangible. This is, fundamentally, why we are so arrested by Mankin’s work as viewers. He generates a visceral response. One unearthed mark, one part-hidden hue, will generate a memory, a feeling, a sense of something mistily remembered. We do not only feel the sea spray on our faces, the warmth of the sun, the drama of high winds, whilst standing in front of a David Mankin painting, we feel it speaks to us directly, excavating our own weathered, private, devotion to land and sea.
Kate Reeve-Edwards
