Artist Interview, David Mann

Alicia DeBrincat interviewed David Mann for Artfile Magazine. They discussed his work being between abstraction and figuration and his inspiration. DeBrincat asked about being inspired by images from science and Mann responded..

Very much so. It’s not so much the images per se, but the qualities about them. There’s a kind of light that images from a Scanning Electron Microscope give off. It has something to do with things being backlit, and almost silhouetted in the light..... 

...Well, the sense of light for instance in the paintings. That really has to do with the viscous and transparent quality of glazes, the luminosity of oil paint in substance and in color, rather than, say a landscape painter, who’s painting in plein air, and who would paint light hitting the side of a tree trunk very literally, how they observe the light. The process in my case is through creating a situation in which light is bouncing off the bottom surface of the painting and back through all these glazes. It’s the difference between reflected light and transmitted light.

Future's Wake, 2013
Acrylic and oil on canvas stretched over board
72 x 68 inches

Network, 2013
Acrylic and oil on canvas stretched over board
68 x 72 inches

Jump Cut, 2013
Acrylic and oil on canvas stretched over board
48 1/2 x 46 inches