Lynn Manos

Artist's Statement

I am a painter/printmaker currently working in Florida. My work is representational and expressionistic. The current subject matter is water and small, colorful, wooden boats. The water is the main subject. The boats and their reflections activate the water. My search for small wooden boats often takes me to Venice, Italy and Greece. I always discover something wonderful in each country. The elegant shape of the Venetian gondolas and the colors of the small Greek dinghies both interest me as figurative elements.

The Aegean Sea Monotypes were inspired by September 2006 and May 2008 one-month residencies at the Skopelos Foundation for the Arts, a nonprofit printmaking workshop on the island of Skopelos, Greece. The Foundation sits on the top of a mountain and the daily walk to town was down a winding mountain path near the cliffs with spectacular views of the Aegean Sea below. I became inspired to do monotypes of the sea from above.

In Greece, the size of my suitcase dictated the size of the monotypes that I painted at the Foundation. I wanted them bigger so I did them in two or four sections. I intentionally did not want them to match exactly where they intersect. I want the viewer to be aware that this is a print, an impression of the sea and not an attempt at an exact replication. These monotypes strive to place the viewer in the experience of the sea—the smell, the movement, the translucency and fluidity of the water, and the feeling that one could be overpowered and swallowed up by nature.

The most recent Fifty-one Dinghies works are the completetion of the original Fifty-one Dinghies and Fifty-one Venetian Dinghies series. The Venetian Dingies monotypes were done in July 2010 at the Scoula Graphic International, Venice, Italy, using a large hand-crank offset press.

2010