Megan Manning

For my Final Major Project I explored ideas around impermanence. I looked at the natural changing and moving of things, especially the objects within my home that were picked up and moved without thought. I captured impermanent moments, moments that won’t happen again. Those objects were placed there without thought prior to any plans to draw them and I made sure to not tamper with their arrangements, portraying them as they were. After I was done drawing or painting, those same objects moved somewhere else once again.

In addition, I looked at the impermanence of emotions, ideas, feelings and situations. I recorded the changes in me, the emotions I felt at the time, the music I was listening to and how all of that influenced the style of the particular piece I was producing at the time. My current situation and condition is impermanent, it will change and shift with time in the same way objects around my house get picked up and put somewhere else.

This work was developed using a variety of processes and medias, from traditional pencil, charcoal, ink, acrylic and oil paintings, through to digital drawings and paintings using different experimental methods. I did a lot of things I had not done before such as painting with oil paints for the first time, drawing in sand on a beach, making a substantial digital painting and drawing from observation digitally.

I also made speedpaints, which are recordings of me drawing or painting which are then sped up so that you can see the full process in much less time. These capture the work that went into creating the pieces, which would have been lost to time if I hadn’t recorded them. Watch the digital Bed speedpaint here: https://youtu.be/hiXUTgU4DFM

I created a series of artworks, five of which are showcased here, that show and capture impermanence. What is lovely, and something I didn’t plan for, is the way that the pieces in my series have all linked and become connected in an almost story like way. Items such as my red hoodie or clear black topped bottle became prominent ‘characters’ across multiple pieces, showing multiple impermanent placements of each item, and even being a part of the ‘second subject’ in other pieces (the ‘second subject’ is a term used by Dana Schutz referring to the surrounding context that, although it’s not visible in a painting itself, it is kept in the piece through the artists memory). For example, my hoodie was painted on the bed, then hanging on the clothes horse and drawn there, and I wore it while drawing another piece.

I’m extremely pleased with the work I’ve been able to produce in this time and I’m very glad I chose the theme of impermanence as it has allowed for a really diverse and interesting body of work, it’s been very fun too which is great!