This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, Aug. 28, 2012 - The abstract renderings of St. Louis artist Peter Manion III, offer his audience a narrative experience: to see his work is to see the artist himself.
Each piece, from “Give me a kiss” to “Seasons of labor” to “The way we live” to his latest works, reflects Manion, his experience, his life and times. All share the underpinnings of the artist’s internal battle. Cerebral and primal, Manion seeks definition with each stroke.
He draws, paints, carves, shapes, lathers, shaves, crushes and smears his chosen media onto paper and canvas and, lately, tablecloth. His vision reflects his internal conversation. And his materials say as much about his perspective and experience as they do about his creative process and his life.
Manion, 41, grew up in St. Louis in a Catholic family. His adventuresome and determined Argentine mother taught him that life is about taking risks, calculated, measured chances -- and that success was not optional.
She balked at the idea of art school, but Manion is his mother’s son. He stood his ground and chose The Art Institute of Chicago. There, he began his experimentation with concepts, with materials and — more or less — with life itself.
In those days, he used his art to speak to his audience, and his work revealed his desire for something less refined, more unexpected, less traditional, more visceral than acrylic or oil.
“My mentors encouraged me to explore,” he said. “I did not want to work with paint. I got the idea of painting with tar.”
After Manion graduated, he returned to St. Louis and married.
His wife, Sheila, who works in institutional fundraising, spent her days convincing St. Louis’ movers and shakers to support civic improvements, while he applied his fine art brushes to rehabbing old houses.
But then the economy tanked and, little by little, Manion’s restoration jobs fell away.
With time on his hands, growing frustration and mounting bills, he needed an outlet.
“I began dabbling with supplies I had lying around,” he said. “Given our financial situation, this was not a time when I could afford to go out and buy paint.”
Manion started using Vaseline to extend the life of his oils and found it to be an interesting medium. He experimented and found that his life experiences as a contractor and his new-found position as a stay-at-home dad were useful in the process, as well as the finished product.
Filled with color and movement and light, Manion’s works are dynamic. One piece, called “W.O.W” is a mixed media on canvas that juxtaposes distinctive squiggles in bright, lime green, white, orange and more, over variegated reds and oranges.
Another, “Gift for Bridget,” an oil on canvas, is a barrage of information and rudimentary images that bombards the space, a seeming microcosm of Manion’s domestic world.
Then there is “Honey I’m home,” mixed media on paper. It is peopled with a dark-brown headless figure crudely layered in and another partial figure fashioned from sand and brown paint.
This sort of exploration between the fine and the familial, the play between convention and creativity, is basic to Manion’s work.
“There is a clear relationship of the artist to the process,” said Andrew Walker, museum director of the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth, Texas. Walker, who formerly worked at the Saint Louis Art Museum, has become a friend and an admirer of Manion’s work. “There is that authenticity about life. It resonates with people.”
Last February, Manion’s first solo exhibit drew a crowd to Space, a gallery and design firm in The Grove.
Currently, he has 15 pieces on display through Sept. 15 at Niche Home Furnishings & Design at 300 N. Broadway in downtown St. Louis.
Next year, he will have a solo show at the SOHA Studio and Gallery, 4915 Macklind Ave.
“Peter has just beautiful work on paper, very bold and complex,” said Julie Malone, owner of SOHA and a painter. “I know whatever he does will look great in the space and the community will enjoy them.”
All of this attention does not surprise Walker.
“From an art historian and curator perspective, the work is very intuitive,” Walker said. “There is a sense of personal relationship, something corporal being abstracted and that possibility of failure and experimentation. That resists the work becoming decorative — there are times when it soars.”
One piece, called “Man,” offers a nuanced rendering. White on white, nearly invisible strokes, thin, almost imperceptible in context, yet rich and vast whispers of strokes held within its seemingly opaque layers. Hidden.
For Manion, it is time and trial, and occasionally, tribulation. And that’s what he renders. In oils and charcoals, sand and Vaseline. On paper, on canvas, in the folds of a tablecloth.