Interview with Artist Jackie Manning

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Describe Ghost in the Graveyard, the game on which you have based this body of work.

There are outdoor and gym versions of the game. We always played it at night, so that always amped up how scary it was. I think there are a bunch of variations, but we’d be right outside the front door on the porch, and one person would be the ghost and they would go hide. There was a perimeter — no crossing the street or going into the neighbor’s yard. Everybody else would count, “one o’clock, two o’clock…” up until midnight, then yell “ghost in the graveyard.” Then we’d run around and if you were caught, you became a ghost and if not then you would play again until it all came down to one person. It was a game that I had really fond memories of playing.

How did you get the idea to start painting about this game?

I had finished a series of paintings with all figures in nature and I was teaching kids art, so I was reading all these great books like “Harry Potter” and “The Golden Compass.” As I was teaching the kids that posed for this project, we did a caricature where we had to do these funny cartoon characters of their favorite people, so they were giving me lists of people that they’d like to do. They started naming all the “Twilight” people, and at first I had no idea what they were talking about, so I researched that. I was kind of in this kids’ world and it started reminding me of playing this game as a kid, where the imagination runs wild. It was fun and scary, and as far as we were concerned, there were real ghosts. So that was how I decided to do this series, based on the kids’ influence on me.

What was it about this particular game that had such an influence on you that it has stuck with you for so long?

I have really young memories of it. My first memories of playing it, I was 8 or 9, and I was in Ireland. We were staying with cousins and there were a bunch of kids. I have all these childhood memories of Ireland, but one of them was just really scary but really exciting, one of those memories that you have captured: running around in the dark with all these kids you just met. Then when I’d play with my cousins (in Oregon) there was a wide age group variety. We had older cousins that would just scare the crap out of us basically, and I have these really solid memories of just running for my life. It was fun and usually there were bugs everywhere and we were crawling around in the dirt. We took it pretty extreme. My grandmother’s house had an old well built up and outdoor fireplaces so we’d hide behind those and the big rhododendron bush, so we never knew where someone was going to come from. It wasn’t just an open space; we really had an obstacle course to get through. We had other fun games, but that one stuck because I think we played it so many times in so many places.

Tell me a little bit about your other work. How does this series compare?

I’ve been working in this style for a while now. I went to grad school in San Francisco and I started playing with mixed media while I was in school, which is every kind of found object placed into the art. There’s a three-dimensional, sculptural quality, with layers of paint over the top and all sorts of stuff in there. I started playing with that about five years ago. I would say my work has been consistent as far as this style of mixed media, but I haven’t had such a specific narrative before, as far as a story goes. Before, it was figures in nature and a variety of subject matter. I have fun with the mixed media because you can’t really control it. You put all these things in and you have to make them work in this overall picture. There’s a tactile quality you get from found objects that I think plays with the image and that two-dimensional and three-dimensional quality. That’s been fun to work with. I was trained very academically and then I started working more semi-abstract (that’s kind of a funny word, but the idea is that it’s not really defined). I like to play with the planes of the background and the foreground, playing between them. The figure gets camouflaged into the background, so there are areas where it stands out and other areas where you can’t really tell the figure from the background. I like playing with that imagery and pulling it all together kind of like it’s one entity or one thing. This narrative just popped into my head and I thought it’d be fun to have a whole series of paintings to play with.

What kind of materials besides paint are you throwing in there?

Oh, there’s all sorts of stuff. There’s some organic material, different kinds of cloth, broken ceramics, a lot of found bones, vertebras and different things that I’ve found traveling. This one in particular (“Silver Cliff”) has a type of bark that peels off. I try to play with some of the qualities of found objects within a place and put those in, working with what’s around that would connect your memory, and make you feel what it’s like to be there.

Is any of this stuff from your childhood places?

Yes. Most of the bark is from around here. People have been giving me things or I have family things, like my hair from when I was a kid. I put that in one of the paintings. My grandmother was a furrier, so she had these old fur stoles and I’ve put that kind of stuff in. Anything, basically. I’ve got these big piles of stuff I’ve collected so I just start placing it so. I usually put all the materials in first and then paint over them.

Do you have a hard time throwing things away because you see things as potential materials?

Oh, yeah. I started collecting shells when I was a little kid, so I have a ridiculous shell collection and I’ve put shells in different pieces. Broken plates have been really cool, especially if they have a painted pattern on them that you can play with.

With so many layers and so many things included, only you will know what all has gone into a painting.

I think it’s kind of fun because I don’t know if I really think of it as being for myself. When I finish paintings, I’ve noticed that people will find stuff. So maybe it isn’t obvious at first, but if you walk up close maybe you’ll see something. I do think that it’s fun in that there’s an added layer to the painting. Kids usually find stuff pretty easily.

Who are the kids who modeled for you?

I was teaching art in Colorado and I talked to the kids about the game. It was a Saturday and I set up a whole photo shoot. It ended up being really fun. There was this school up on this hill and there was a big grassy area with trees and streams in it, so we played it in there. They were a great group of kids that loved doing art. It was like an advanced after-school art program they had signed up for. So they were excited about everything.

When you set up that photo shoot, did you have this whole series in mind or was it still developing?

I had imagery in mind that was specific to either my childhood or images of places with certain lighting, so I had all these ideas in my head. But as with any photo shoot — especially with kids — it just is going to be what it is going to be. The idea popped into my head and I started formulating the vision of what it was going to look like. Then I got the models and the location, then the paintings were completely different from the photos and it ended up being a different outcome from the immediate imagery that first came to mind. But I don’t control it from the beginning; it has a mind of its own.

Were there a lot of pleasant surprises?

I try to keep it playful, and then when I start to see things that work, pull it together. It’s fun for me to paint that way, rather than so academically. To me this is a really fun way to go.

These paintings seem to have a dreamlike quality to them. Do you have dreams about these paintings?

I don’t really remember my dreams. I’d say that I don’t have dreams but I do have daydreams, especially in the beginning of playing with a piece. I’d have these daydreams about how the imagery would work, the lighting, and play with that in my head.

How large are the paintings?

The one on the show card is 4 feet by 6 feet, and that’s probably on the smaller end. Some are 9 feet by 4 feet with long trails of kids. They’re all large scale. There are 13 total, on board.

When you are surrounded in the gallery by all these, maybe you’ll feel like you’re in the game?

I hope so. The way the gallery is set up you can be surrounded like that.

Is there a lot of variation between each piece?

There is a little bit, some are more — I hate to say — representational, but the image is more surreal. Some are more surreal, some are a little more obvious and you don’t have to search as much. I like to think that they’re all pretty different, but they’re all by the same artist so they all have the same flow. They’re all dark with electric colors, like a nighttime feel. Most of my past work has been more subdued natural colors, and with this I decided to focus on an electric palette and play with that idea of nighttime and imagination. I think my memories have that feel, it all feels a little electric, those heightened senses that you think about as a kid.

What have you learned from the process of painting these, and how have you developed as an artist?

I’d say whenever I’m painting a lot, the ideas come, and they just flow. The tricky part is keeping that going in the in-between time. All the materials are different. I did play in particular with the compositions of these. I was looking at a lot of Japanese woodblock prints that have a specific kind of composition in things that are cropped, with extreme lines or proportions heightened to push the perspective. So I played a lot with those ideas. Every time I work with something different, who knows what it’s going to do and what I’m going to take from it. The composition was fun to play with. The colors were definitely different for me. I think when I start the next series, it’ll probably be more obvious to me what I learned. I’m still very much in the process of this series. With my show and how it’s received, it’ll be fun to see how narrative feels vs. something without that narrative. I’m interested to see what that feedback is.