About Steve Manning

I'm a printmaker based in Exeter, Devon. I work out of an attic studio with windows commanding views of sky and clouds, the inspiration for my prints.  I use reduction lino printing to produce limited edition spacious landscapes inspired by marsh, moorland and estuaries. Reduction printing is a challenging discipline because the lino block is gradually destroyed as subsequent layers are cut away, leaving little room for error. Skies and clouds provide the focus of my images, the cloudscape often informing the overall composition. The challenge is to render distant vistas and ethereal skies using a medium usually associated with bold blocks of colour. I achieve this by either lightening colours with white or thinning them with extender. The end result is prints imbued with a ‘painterly’ quality. The creation of my prints is a painstaking, frustrating, frequently complicated and an occasionally unsuccessful exercise using a medium not entirely suited to rendering the ephemeral nature of my chosen subject matter! I should be a watercolourist but I love the combination of craft and fine art printmaking offers. I am a member of the Devon Guild of Crafstmen and the South West Academy of Fine and Applied Arts.