ANNIE MCMANUS
As a child growing up in rural Dorset Annie was only interested in reading and drawing, which meant, later on, making a difficult choice between pursuing an academic or an art degree. Books won, and she read English at Cambridge, where she says she possibly spent more time drawing the colleges and the river than preparing Chaucer and Shakespeare essays.
Later, when her children were all at school, she was able to embark on some further art education, first in Brighton, then with an MA in Drawing at Wimbledon College of Art. Annie now draws and paints full time in her studio, surrounded by the beautiful Sussex countryside.
Annie has a restless approach to painting. Some of her work is deliberate and detailed, with a focus on a single individual, playing some kind of unexpected role. These are paintings that take time, but she has fun working on them because there is humour involved. Always acrylic, with careful drawing. Another kind of work is more abstract, livelier, drippy, using paint more freely, mixing media, trying to drag the final image out of chaos. Naturally these works end up more ‘painterly’. Then there’s the flatter kind of ‘William Scott’ approach, and then again…......
Annie says that she is fascinated by experimenting, pushing the possibilities of ideas and materials to the limit, or at least to her limit. There is nothing that doesn’t work as a subject, still life, flowers, the human form, landscape and birds are all inspirations. Annie claims (with some regret) that she sometimes presses on before she realises all the possibilities there are in a particular way of working. While the next excitement beckons, she finds it hard to ignore the possibility of discovering something different.