BRANDON TOWNSHIP – For Joan Mannino, art is not just something she does; it is something she is passionate about. It is also something very private.
“For me, art is such an intimate thing,” she said. “Of course I want to share the work, but it is so personal, it is almost like letting someone see your soul.”
For three months of the year, Mannino is devoted to painting. The pieces she does are inspired by her own backyard and her passion for nature.
Her paintings also go hand in hand with her other passion in life- landscape and garden design. She concentrates for seven months of the year on landscaping with her husband, Philip, at Colorscape Designs, which they have owned for 23 years.
“I have always done my art,” Mannino said. “I went to Murray State University in Murray Ky. and double-majored in art and landscape design.”
Born and raised in Paducah, Ky., Mannino says that she was unique in her art among her family.
“My mother is a quilter,” she said, “but as far as art running in the family, that is it. I am also unique in the fact that I love to work with a shovel and dirt, and I would be perfectly happy to mow lawns all day.”
Over the past few years, Mannino has entered some of her works into shows. Two of the more prominent ones were at the Birmingham Community House and at University of Michigan-Dearborn’s Animal/Vegetable/Mineral II show.
From the UM show, Mannino had two of her works purchased by the college, which are now on permanent display in the University’s Environmental Interpretive Center. One of them, a gouache (pronounced “gawash”) painting of a Red-Headed Woodpecker, was featured on the back cover of the Fall 2002 Legacy alumni magazine.
Mannino’s medium, gouache, is a form of paint much like watercolor, but even more transparent.
“I think that it is through the many layers of paint that you get the infinite detail with gouache,” Mannino added.
As with any art form, patience is a requirement. According to her it takes about one week to 10 days to finish a piece. “Fine art definitely takes a thought process,” she said. “It is not something instantaneous, it has to be in you, and I have to discipline myself to get into that groove of fine arts.”
With all the detail Mannino is capable of creating, she uses it to focus on works of art completely from nature.
“My love for fine art is inspired by landscape work, I could not survive one without the other. I only paint what comes to me and I see in my own yard or in nature,” she said. “I believe that history tells us a lot of artists and writers had garden which they spent time in, and I can relate to that. It is such a free environment; it’s limitless.
“We like living in Ortonville for the quiet,” Mannino added. “We live on four acres surrounded by 10- and 20-acre parcels. It is peaceful.
“When I first began to show my work at the university, Ken Gross and Joe Marks were two people who really made my transition from private to public very comfortable,” Mannino said. “They were very important elements in my bringing work out to show.”
Currently, Mannino is preparing imagery for a show in her hometown of Paducah. She and her husband have lived in Ortonville for 13 years.
“I love it out here,” she said. “It feels like home here, and this will always be home.”