The artist showed me some examples of found objects he has acquired on his naturalist wanderings: a blue lobster pot rope, a piece of wood lashed and warped by the tide, and a crimson circle of plastic, perhaps from a fishing crate.

As well as being visual stimulants, these objects sometimes make their way into the canvas literally, the artist using them as stencils to trace the paint around. In the studio, Mankin begins with small works on paper using pastel, charcoal, pencil, pen and crayon, in a number of different sketchbooks. True to form, he does not address even his planning-process in a linear fashion, jumping between different sketchbooks and ideas as they come to him naturally, mirroring the way his canvases rove over different viewpoints. He then moves onto larger sheets of paper, using acrylic to ‘find a way in’, starting to push the materials even at this early stage, explaining ‘you can be quite explosive with the application of paint and different textures’. He then disrupts what he has fixed down, or changes the direction of the focus by cropping into the larger sheets, to see if any interesting compositions or colour combinations become apparent. This small section is then blown up to a potentially huge scale. He doesn’t feel constrained with huge canvases, although perhaps slightly daunted, explaining that tackling one feels like ‘diving off a cliff into a deep pool’. He enjoys sitting in uncomfortable states of mind, relishing the risk in not having a plan, stating ‘the risk in painting is important- if you don’t take risks you won’t get to the magic point’; knowing that his best work comes from a place of tension bordering on difficulty.

His compositions appear so calculatingly thought-out. The viewer can easily crop into any one of his paintings and find a section within it that could be a painting in its own right; this comes from the artist’s very sporadic yet intensive process of aggressive refinement, stripping things back, unearthing buried marks, changing direction, shifting the view point, destroying a section, building it back up again. He calls this process ‘reshuffling the deck’, valuing accidents, mistakes, tactility, transformation, and destabilisation. The obvious compositional form to go for with a landscape painting is the horizon line, but Mankin actively rejects and disrupts this, choosing abstraction as his method to express, focusing on infusing the painting with the right feeling and mood. He states that ‘the possibilities of paint are very important’, and stresses the importance of not limiting them because of personal fear.

Mankin’s internal and external influences don’t change significantly, but the materials and their application is the part of his practise that he feels can and should constantly shift. He explains that he is always exploring new ways of applying the paint, new radical compositions, different colour combinations, and different scales. Elaborating that there should be a constant process of exploring and upsetting, otherwise a dialogue won’t be created between artwork and viewer and that when the artist stops playing and pushing the work can become static. Therefore he pushes himself to use different and stranger methods to ensure something exciting emerges. This process thus collides his automatic, intuitive, and expressive response against the formal qualities he is trying to achieve: a wave slapping against a rock-face, creating an explosion of sea-spray.

It is this connection to painting the ‘sublime’ that we can place on Mankin’s work. Abstraction is really the only proper way to depict the landscape, as ridding it of its essential drama is a ‘dehumanised response’ that manages and regulates the unruly. Mankin is especially interested in how the landscape upsets our mental state in a pleasurable way, and projects this complexity onto his canvases. He taps into the human feeling of excitement at being unnerved by the drama of landscape. As a human being you suddenly become completely insignificant: there is no rationality or humanity in the sea, the wind, or the rain, giving us a moment of complete liberation in our invisibility. Mankin elaborates, ‘there is a spirit to it- you can’t quite get away from the religion of the sublime.’   

Mankin strives for place within his work. This is not specified or tied down, his work is too energetic for that. Similarly, there is no over-analysed narrative nor any political agenda, the artist just spills onto the canvass his momentary experiences of the landscape, giving the viewer an authentic elemental experience. 

Mankin is always inhabiting ‘a moment’ when he is creating his work, which explains the paintings’ grounded intensity, however these moments shift and change constantly. The multiple moments and perspectives within the paintings ensure links and associations are constantly developing as the painting finds its way. He explains that the painting builds and progresses on its own trajectory, that any attempt to tie down and prescribe would disrupt the sense of place. This, of course, is the beauty of abstract painting: it throws up so many different connections all at once, ‘your brain overheats with the possibilities of where you are going to take it next’, says Mankin.

However, within this abstraction there is an element of the personal in Mankin’s paintings. The artist sees each canvas as a chance to express himself in the moment, through the medium of paint, repeating the old maxim ‘every painter paints themselves.’ He explains that this is important for the effectiveness of the work too, as if there isn’t a tangible investment in the work, the viewer won’t feel like they want to climb into and inhabit the painting. One of the ways Mankin manages this deep investment in the work is through music, which he never paints without.