JJ Manford

JJ Manford (B. 1983) lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. Drawing upon art historical sources, personal as well as projective memories, textiles and the rural New York landscape, JJ Manford's works explore themes of nomadism, isolation, the sublime, the psychedelic and transcendent, with a compositional sense that often employs a tension between figuration and abstraction. Recent solo and two person shows include “Greenport Magic" at Arts and Leisure Gallery (catalogue available, with essays by Will Blythe of The New York Times, and Jon Lutz of 106 Green Gallery), Harlem, NY, “Wanderers and Wildflowers" at John Davis Gallery, Hudson, NY, “Liminal Grove", One River Gallery, Allendale & Englewood, and “Through Every Leaf" (with Max Razdow) at Freight + Volume Gallery, NYC. JJ's work and curatorial projects have been written about and mentioned by such publications as Hyperallergic, The New Yorker, Huffington Post, Art Fuse, Wall Street International, Ephemera NYC, Gorky's Granddaughter (video interview), and On-Verge (interviewed by Katherine Bradford).

Statement

I see my paintings as a convergence of the projective and spontaneous with the formal and strategic. There usually needs to be a balance between these two applications, or else the image does not coalesce with the right amount of dynamic tension, and produces no magic. Hardly any of my paintings are literal depictions of personal memories, or places I have been or thought about, however all of these things seep into my unconscious and rise to the level of my awareness, to varying degrees. Along those lines, I tend to shy away from prescriptive imagery, and trust where my compositional and painterly impulses take me.