A Celebration of Sky: Steve Manning

19th September to 2nd October

Steve is a printmaker based in Devon producing unique limited edition linocut prints.  His images are inspired by the cloudscapes that gather over moorland, estuary and coast.  He says:

"My preference is for relief printmaking using traditional lino and wherever possible employing the reduction method, a challenging technique where the block is progressively destroyed as the print advances, leaving little room for error! I draw my inspiration from the natural world and landscapes of vast, overarching skies such as moorland, marsh and estuary endeavouring to capture something of the expanse and freedom of these places.

I am particularly interested in skies and clouds and these provide the focus of my images, the cloudscape often informing the overall composition of the completed print. For me the challenge is to render distant vistas and ethereal skies using a medium usually associated with bold blocks of colour. I achieve this by either lightening colours with white or thinning them with extender. The end result is prints which could be described as having a ‘painterly’ quality.

Relief printmaking is not a spontaneous discipline. The creation of my prints is a painstaking, frustrating, frequently complicated and an occasionally unsuccessful exercise using a medium not entirely suited to rendering the ephemeral nature of my chosen subject matter! I should be a watercolourist but I love the combination of craft and fine art printmaking offers."

Image: 'Sun Across The Bay' by Steve Manning