Essays

" A painter is a kind of beachcomber" Peter Lanyon David Mankin’s work is about the pulse of the landscape. There is no attempt to mimic a pretty ‘view’, instead he explores the elemental impermanence of the unique Cornish topography. Mankin’s work goes beyond its obvious beauty and delves into the minutiae of rock pools on the foreshore, the incoming squall, the lash of a wave, the formation of lichen on granite. Emotion, drama, and his own personal love for the landscape su

Perpetual Flux  an exhibition of new paintings by David Mankin
 26 September to 20 October 2018 at Cornwall Contemporary Gallery   “So all around the morning air and the sea’s blue light, with points of diamond, and the gorse incandescent beyond the trees, countless rocks ragged or round in every colour, birds resting or flying, and a sense of a multitude of creatures living out their minute lives…. All this is part of one’s life and I want desperately to express it; not just

An elemental realism comes across in David Mankin’s work. Although the visual perspective constantly shifts within his canvas from the sea shore to a horizon line, the pattern of lichen on a rock to an aerial view of the coastline, the paintings capture an experiential truth. His abstract techniques allow this to come through, precisely because the dramatic and rebellious Cornish landscape refuses to be confined in representational work. This feeling and essence of the landsc