David Mankin
‘Thresholds’ Catalogue Foreword
‘The artist himself is an elemental force, filling up every available space within his work like water, refusing to crawl back from any boundary by hitting it with his full force until it breaks apart.’
An elemental realism comes across in David Mankin's work. Although the visual perspective constantly shifts within his canvas, from the sea shore to a horizon line; the pattern of lichen on a rock to an aerial view of the coastline, the paintings capture an experiential truth. His abstract techniques allow this to come through, precisely because the dramatic and rebellious Cornish landscape refuses to be confined in representational work. This feeling and essence of the landscape is in every brushstroke hitting the canvas; this, combined with the undeniable beauty of the work, is perhaps why so many people have related to and fallen in love with Mankin's paintings.
Mankin physically attacks the canvas 'with a certain degree of attitude,' scratching into it, splattering large arcs of paint made with enormous sweeps of the arm. Sometimes the artist will draw his compositional outline onto the canvas in charcoal, but he will always eradicate it, making a point of constantly changing direction: the wind forcing the cliff-edge-tamarisk one way, then another. In this sense, his way of painting is deeply expressive, it consistently follows the feelings he has about the landscape, the change and flux of it, its unpredictability, the way the weather physically changes it, its inability to be contained: this is what excites Mankin. Thus in his unprescribed painting process we can see he almost inhabits the fluctuating personality of the Cornish landscape.
The artist himself is an elemental force, filling up every available space within his work like water, refusing to crawl back from any boundary by hitting it with his full force until it breaks apart, picking up the pieces and rearranging them on a canvas so we can step inside his world and feel the wind take our breath away.
For more information: https://www.david-mankin.com/thresholds