Wayne Manns - Profile of the Artist

I was born and raised in Atlantic City, New Jersey, home of the famous Boardwalk, the Steel Pier, the 500 Club and Club Harlem. It was called the "Playground of the World." Everybody played Atlantic City, Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr., Billie Holiday, Duke Ellington and even the Beatles. As a boy, my father would take me to many of these shows. I’d get to go backstage with him and meet many wonderful performers.

My grandmother, Nettie, owned and operated one of the few black hotels in Atlantic City called the Ridley Hotel. It was here that my father studied the piano and first heard jazz music. Many of the Black performers that played the white hotel clubs and cabarets had to stay in my grandmother’s hotel due to segregation. The hotel eventually became the subject of a poem by my great uncle, Countee Cullen, the Harlem Renaissance-era poet.

My mother, Frances, worked hard cooking and keeping our home nice. She would always have the phonograph going, playing records and singing popular tunes. But the piano was the center of our home. My father would often play into the wee hours of the night. Luckily for me he did not believe in bedtime. I absorbed it all. These sights and sounds would later become the inspiration for my paintings.

I took piano lessons when I was five years old and did well in school. I often played in recitals, talent shows, and church functions. I also picked up pencils and crayons and would draw characters from comic books and history books. My favorite character was George Washington. I thought that George Washington, mounted on his white horse, was the greatest hero. I would draw countless images of our first president.

While in middle school and high school I moved towards the sciences. In college, I attended Rutgers University and majored in Biochemistry. My love for mixing chemicals would later help me make better use of oil paints, mediums, and solvents that I employed in my work.

About seven years ago I picked up a pad and pencil and started drawing again. I would draw everybody I’d see or meet. I discovered that people liked these simple drawings; sometimes they would even offer to buy them. I’d usually just give them away. Up till then, I never thought of this as a profession. One day I had a vision of being a painter. I had a strong sensation while awake; it was very powerful and moved me to draw a picture of myself in a studio with a palette and brushes in hand at my easel. I later sent this picture to my mother, informing her I was going to be a painter. Three or four months later, as fate would have it, an opportunity beyond my wildest dreams presented itself. While at a friend’s house I noticed many different oil paintings hanging on the walls. Immediately our conversation turned to the paintings and the various artists that painted them. She showed me two pieces that her father painted before he died.

Some weeks passed and I showed her some of my drawings. She liked them. She grabbed my arm and pulled me up to her father’s studio. It was a small room. Sitting in the corner was an enormous easel that seemed even larger as I walked toward it. Old tubes of oil paints in wooden boxes sat next to the easel. In another box were bottles of linseed oil, stand oil, and paint thinner. On top of a small table were coffee cans filled with many different size paintbrushes.

This was a magic moment in my life. Although I felt a terrible desire to pick up these brushes and try to paint something, I was overcome with apprehension. I knew nothing about painting. My friend uncapped several tubes and squeezed the colors on a palette. She then mixed some oil with the paint and told me to give it a try. She left the room and I found myself in front of this huge easel holding a brush. I began shaking. I had a picture of my father in my wallet. I pulled it out, looked at the picture, and with trepidation, I sketched his face on the old canvas.

Around 3:00 AM my friend came upstairs and said, "good, now you have to keep working the colors and be patient because the paint has to dry." I had noticed that after a while I was moving the paint more freely. What I didn’t realize was that the time had passed so fast; what felt like minutes were actually hours.

My first painting, "Ode to my Father," was a tribute I wanted to make to my late father, to the magic he created with sound. The more I painted the better I felt I could control the paint. In 1993, I decided to dedicate my life to painting and to tell my story through images. Since then I have sought out painters, students, and art teachers to discuss my chosen craft. I visited galleries and museums in several countries of Europe, South America, as well as in the United States. Observing the Masters, studying their techniques and different mannerisms, I worked towards developing my own style.

I have been strongly influenced by Van Gogh, Matisse, Bob Thompson, and Jacob Laurence, who is from my hometown. My art is an on going exploration of my love of people, the richness of jazz music, and the gaiety of dance and parades. My current work is a search for purity, simplicity, and fullness in expressing various human situations.

My painting process begins with a mental image, which I then translate to paper. I love to work from my imagination, and to free those images from the mind. I like to take classical themes or mythological images and reinterpret them with a contemporary vision or notion I may have. In this way, famous works such as "Mona Lisa" and "The Last Supper" became "Sister Mona" and "The Other Last Supper." I reworked "George Washington Crossing the Delaware River" and replaced the figures with Jazz musicians I know and love.

Jazz music dominates my work. Even when I paint a still life, a trumpet often appears as a symbol of my affinity to Jazz. . I wake up early, put on some music, and I paint as long as there is natural light in my studio. I have a need to paint the notes I have heard in my life. It is a necessity for me, like my blood and the air that I breathe.

Wayne Manns