David Manley
I’ve been wedded to the idea of abstraction in art ever since the start of my student days back in the late 60’s. This has developed over the decades into a passion for paint and a commitment to non-representational means through which to express my ideas. As regards these recent paintings draw on a number of sources; observations of both land & sea scapes, incidental details in them, basic geometry and, in trying to complicate the structures within the pictures, often inspired by recent poetry, fifties interior design and 50’s & 60’s jazz, amongst many other topics. Within this chaotic range of possibilities my search for both meaning and form will often see me pursuing differing ideas for content, stylistic structures and approaches to materials and methods. Consequently there really isn’t an identifiable ‘brand’ to my painting practice although certain tropes reappear over time.
David Manley has been living, working and making abstract paintings in the East Midlands for nearly forty years, having studied at Exeter, Falmouth & Birmingham art schools in the early 1970’s and been a Painting Fellow at Cheltenham Art School in 1975. He has exhibited widely including Tokyo, Japan and in Germany, Italy, Portugal and half a dozen other European countries. His most recent solo shows took place at the New Court Gallery, South Derbyshire and the Angear Gallery at Nottingham’s Lakeside Arts Centre. He regularly exhibits in group exhibitions around the UK and has curated a number of exhibitions of contemporary British painting in Derby over the past decade.