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ARTIST STATEMENT 2010 Nance McManus, CPS Everyday I
am overwhelmed when I start to paint. My choice of pastel painting (yes, pure pigment) is the immediacy and the response of the paint from my heart and to my hand. I can’t be bothered to mix colors or wait for pigment to dry. I am very happy to walk by the studio, pick up a pastel, and go to work on a section that needs to be changed or enhanced at a moment’s response. It is that flexibility that allows this painter total freedom in her painting. I don’t have to worry about getting it right the first time as I can always go back in to the painting with a different color or thought process. Taking my mentor’s, Bill Herring, suggestion of a three-year sabbatical (1999-2002) to only study and not sell any art was the best part of my whole art education. It made me focus on my commitment to art as well as composition and drafting. Whilst using pastels I am forced to use pure color, which suits me, just fine! I find in using my own textured ground I can also take advantage of the motion of the surface to enhance my paintings. I like the idea that a viewer might get one impression from across the room and then when they move closer there is much more to be found in the layers of paint. This all makes for a more dimensional painting. Recently I have incorporated different gold and silver leafs to bring a added depth to my paintings. Having just returned from Japan, having won a grant to travel there, I can’t wait to see the new changes that will be emerging. The viewer will also notice that I do not sign my work. There is a chop, or impression made from stone, put on all my paintings. This image is a bat…. a sign of good fortune. I wish I could explain why I love to paint. My mother was a painter and I was raised in that kind of atmosphere: studio, oils, and art history. That’s not mentioning the wonderful collection of art we had in our home too. Mother and I would go to the Albuquerque zoo with a packed lunch and our Sumi-e brush sets and paint gesturals of the otters and the birds. I think I was about 6 or 7 years old. Painting is what we “did”. It is this “deliberate” practice that I mean to continue. Exploration whilst learning makes me very happy to be in the studio. The only things I wanted to do when I “grew up” were to paint and to ride my horses. This is precisely what I am doing (although there is still a question of the grown up part). It reminds me that luck IS when preparedness meets opportunity!!!!
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