Farisa Khalid

To Michael Manning: Thanks reaching out and clarifying this distinction. My apologizes for the mistake. I was supposed to write about an emerging painter whose work I found to be really interesting, and I liked your paintings. But found it very difficult in the beginning to find the adequate amount of information about your background and work. I didn’t come across this site from the Bill Brady Gallery’s page at all before, so thank you for putting it up here. In fact it was challenging to find the right amount of background information about you and your work at first, so I’m glad you’ve brought this website to our attention.

In any searches about “the artist Michael Manning,” as a cautionary note, the work of the Michael Manning in Los Angeles tends to come up more frequently. Your work and his both stand out as examples of painting that I really like. I’m sorry if the confusion about your identities may have offended you, but there was relatively little I could find in the beginning to clarify the distinction, so that’s why I made the mistake. But I hope whoever reads this will become more familiar with the work you’ve done and how, at least to me, it seems like a good example of what’s excellent in contemporary painting. —Farisa

Maltese, I think when you think about it carefully, you’ve probably just answered your own questions. What you’re asking it seems, is your way of coming to terms with what your finding interesting in Michael Manning’s work.

My intention with this essay, was to tell people about this painter, perhaps to people who hadn’t heard about his work before, and to get people thinking, which fortunately, is what seems to be happening in this comments forum, and I guess that’s probably the best explanation I can come up with for now.

Hi Maltese, thanks for taking the time to read this essay and to address your thoughts in this comments section. As you’ll recall from the passage I quoted from Michael Manning as he talks about his use of mythology, he says, “With the use of traditional mythology as a foundation, I see the new work as a kind of new mythology — new stories commenting on current issues.”

“New stories commenting on current issues.” My aim towards the end of this essay was to leave the associations between the use of myth by artists and their attempt to come to an understanding our current condition in the open-ended. You’re right. I didn’t push it far enough because I didn’t want to. I think the points you bring up are useful to consider from our own individual perspectives. Myths and folklore provide artists with a set of stories and principles with how we can make sense of history, but what then? Certainly something to think about.

Thank you, Jessica. I’m glad you liked the essay.

Thanks, Kincaid. I really liked that one, too.

Hi, Jamie. Thanks for your kind words. I’m glad you looked at Michael Manning’s other paintings on his website which helps to give you a sense of his body of work. This article would have gone on forever if I talked about all his series of paintings, so I chose only two. I agree with you on the “Gilgamesh” series. I like it too. It’s rich, nuanced, and boldly orchestrated in way that reminds me of Basquiat’s work at times.

Though I think with “All the Pretty Horses” and “The New York Series” he made a conscious, deliberate decision to scale down and limit his color palette. As you’ll notice, he structures the “Horses” series around mostly cooler colors, while with the “New York” series he does so with warmer colors. The colors, which may seem a bit monotonous or “derivative,” as you say, are intentionally honed down to focus on larger thematic concerns.

Thanks, Chae. I’m glad to hear that you liked this.

This is a great list, Sam! I really like the way you described his performance in “Charlie Wilson’s War”, which I thought was incredible. I wonder what you might think about Philip Seymour Hoffman’s performance in 2007’s “Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead”-a dark, convoluted heist/family psychodrama with Ethan Hawke, where PSH’s character, ironically, is battling an addiction with heroin?