MOTHER NATURE! LAURA McMANUS INTERPRETS THE CHANGING SEASONS IN HER NEWEST, LARGEST PAINTINGS EVER

IN UPSTATE NEW YORK, NEAR THE DELAWARE RIVER, AN ARTIST WHO FOCUSES ON THE NATURAL ENVIRONMENT PRESENTS AN EXHIBITION OF AMBITIOUS NEW WORKS

“Laura McManus: Four Seasons Along the Delaware River”
Tricia Kirkland Studio
102 E. Front Street
Hancock NY 13783
Instagram: @triciakirklandstudio

Exhibition on view from November 2 through December 22, 2024
Opening hours on November 2: 5:00 to 8:00 p.m.
For exact gallery hours each week, contact Tricia Kirkland via Instagram or contact Laura Mcmanus via Instagram at @thecamptons.

This article was published on November 2, 2024.

by Edward M. Gómez

HANCOCK, NEW YORK — There are times when, by nature, an artist feels compelled to think — and to work — big.

Very big.

There are also certain subjects, like those inspired by nature itself, which almost demand that they be taken on with an expansive kind of thinking, a grand sense of ambition, a sufficient period of work time set aside — and lots and lots of paint.

Such is the kind of project the artist Laura McManus embarked upon earlier this year, when she set out to produce a series of large-scale, acrylic-on-canvas paintings, each one representing one of the four seasons of the year.

Hancock, New York, March 2024: The artist Laura McManus with a preliminary, smaller version of her in-progress painting “Winter” and the larger canvas itself in a temporary studio space she had set up earlier this year in the gallery she runs with her husband, the artist Jim McManus. Photo by Edward M. Gómez

brutjournal first met Laura in the magazine’s October 2021 issue, in which she was featured in an article titled “Art-making: Knowing When to Draw the Line” Oct 2021. At that time, she told us, “I began drawing in my late teens. I was very much into nature — camping, fishing, swimming — and music (I played piano and flute). Always outdoors. I always liked drawing, but it didn’t become a main pursuit until later.”

Recalling her art training, she said, “I graduated from the Savannah College of Art and Design in Savannah, Georgia, in 1989, as a painting major. There, we had a very extensive foundation in drawing of all kinds. Everyone was required to understand the fundamentals of drawing. Our curriculum was heavy with drawing classes.”

Laura and her husband, the artist Jim McManus, who makes paintings, prints, and mixed-media collage works, spent many years living and working on the island of Tortola in the British Virgin Islands, where they operated their own restaurant and where they still show their work at The Old Customs Building, a commercial gallery. In 2015, they moved to Hancock, a small town in upstate New York situated on the east bank of the Delaware River. There, they founded The Camptons Gallery. For a while, they also operated a small café-restaurant in the town.

Laura McManus, “Winter,” 2024, acrylic and mixed media on canvas, 96 x 168 inches (243.84 x 426.72 centimeters), from the series “Four Seasons Along the Delaware River.” Photo by Bill Westmoreland

Today, their gallery, which presents Laura’s and Jim’s works, as well as those of other artists, occupies a storefront space on one of the main streets leading into Hancock. It was there, hanging her large canvases on one wide wall and creating a temporary art-making studio space within the gallery, that Laura spent the past several months — much of this year, that is — working on her new series of paintings, which ultimately would be titled “Four Seasons Along the Delaware River.”

A grant from the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) allowed the artist to purchase the materials she needed to realize her ambitious undertaking; it also served as a motivation to get it done within a certain time period, because the terms of the award required that Laura publicly exhibit her completed artworks by a designated deadline.

Recalling the genesis of her project, she explained, “A friend suggested that I might like to apply for the NYSCA Support for Artists Grant the spring before I started working on this; she asked if I had any ideas about what I might like to do. I had been painting the four changing seasons each year since we moved to Hancock a few years ago, so the subject I chose turned out to be a quick decision for me.”

Hancock, New York, March 2024: The artist Laura McManus with a smaller painting in which she had worked out some of the technical aspects of the approach she would later take to creating her series titled “Four Seasons Along the Delaware River.” Photo by Edward M. Gómez

She added, “However, this time I wanted to expand and see my finished paintings on a larger scale than the one I had been working on for a long time. I was excited about the idea of working much larger, making four separate, solid pieces, and I wanted to see them outside my usual painting format.”

Laura said that, when viewers examine her finished paintings, she hopes that “they’ll feel as though they’ve just come upon the particular places they’ll see in these pictures, as though they’re actually standing in those spots out in nature, feeling the breeze on a windy day or sensing the ambiance of a calm day.” She said, “I want these canvases to feel alive.”

Laura McManus, “Spring,” 2024, acrylic and mixed media on canvas, 120 x 96 inches (304.8 x 243.84 centimeters). Photo by Bill Westmoreland

The finished paintings were too large to be exhibited in Laura and Jim McManus’s gallery, so they are now being shown nearby, in the street-level, storefront studio and gallery space of the artists’ friend, the jewelry designer Tricia Kirkland.

We asked Laura to tell us more about the thinking that inspired her latest painting project as well as about the technical challenges she encountered as she moved forward with her work. She said, “Right away, I was struck by the vertical nature of the trees that were my main subjects. That verticality was a big concern. I’ve loved experiencing the changing seasons here — the motion of the river’s flowing, the stillness of the lakes, the weather in all its forms and colors.”

Laura added, “I like working on a large scale. It’s physical. With this in mind, it seems to me that these new paintings are a sort of natural evolution in my work and life. I love the work of many other artists — Gustav Klimt, the Post-Impressionists, the Fauves, the Abstract Expressionists. Color and line. In some ways, all of my work, including these new, large paintings, may be seen as responding to such sources.”

Laura McManus, “Summer,” 2024, acrylic and mixed media on canvas, 96 x 168 inches (243.84 x 426.72 centimeters). Photo by Bill Westmoreland

The compositions of all of Laura’s paintings are deeply rooted in drawing. The bold outlines of the trees, rocks, and other elements in her pictures are a signature gesture of her draftsmanship, while the luminous quality of her colors comes from a keen understanding of the nature of — and the challenges posed by — acrylic paint’s fast-drying, viscous goo. She knows how to handle it like the pigment bases of transparent washes in what amounts to a skillful glazing technique and also how to exploit acrylic paint’s qualities as a thick, colored paste.

The manner of painting Laura has developed over the years owes as much to the artistic sources of inspiration and influence she likes to cite as it does, implicitly, to her adept assimilation of the lessons of Cézanne, Cubism, and other modernist modes of representing and interpreting their perceived or imagined subjects.

Prior to embarking on her newest paintings, Laura worked out preliminary ideas about her colors and compositions in smaller preparatory works. She noted, “I made a series of painting-drawings on paper, some large and some small. Still, the real work for me always happens on the canvas; that’s my usual practice. I knew exactly what I wanted to portray but I was totally open to unexpected changes as my work progressed. Something was always being added or subtracted as I worked through each panting.”

Laura McManus, “Autumn,” 2024, acrylic and mixed media on canvas, 120 x 96 inches (304.8 x 243.84 centimeters). Photo by Bill Westmoreland

She added, “I became totally immersed in my work, usually beginning with a simple drawing on the canvas and then watching as everything in a composition came alive as I applied a series of glazes and layers of paint color and lines. I listen to music while I paint. I allow a composition to take shape naturally with a constant back-and-forth rhythm of adding, subtracting, and revising different elements in a flowing creative process that I love.”

Laura told us, “I love the freedom of being able to apply my paint across and within a large field of canvas, and I think these works might weigh more heavily on the eye and make a greater impact on viewers than my usual smaller paintings. I wish I could always paint this big.”