Connor McManus

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Electric Boogie

2013

Music has always framed how I approach my work. While music can express and evoke every form of pain and joy, it remains an essentially playful, non-serious activity. There is no end goal to it; it is beautiful in and of itself. Hurrying it up or slowing it down does not improve the act of listening to it. And on the dance floor, the patterning of melodies, harmonies, rhythms, and textures conspire to move dancers around and around without a purpose. I cherish those rare moments of abject play, and wanted to make a painting that reflected it - that danced on the eyes. As I worked on it, a 6 year old son of one of my professors passed my studio and summed it up: " I don't really know what it's all about, but I like it. It's just buh-doo-bee-bah, buh-doo-bee-bah..."

Remarqued giclees of this piece are available.

Buy $2,000.00

Remarqued giclee print on canvas. 1.5" Gallery Wrap stretcher bars. Copy of original oil on canvas. Original was 5'x 7.5'.
40"x 60"
Shipping cost: $260.00

Purchase Options

$2,000.00 / Remarqued giclee print on canvas. 1.5" Gallery Wrap stretcher bars. Copy of original oil on canvas. Original was 5'x 7.5'. / 40"x 60"

$730.00 / Remarqued giclee print on canvas. 1.5" Gallery Wrap stretcher bars. / 24"x 36"

$330.00 / Giclee print on canvas. 1.5" Gallery Wrap stretcher bars. / 12"x18"

$230.00 / Archival print on Moab Entrada Rag Bright 290 - 100% Cotton paper. Signed. / 12"x18"

$190.00 / Archival print on Moab Entrada Rag Bright 290 - 100% Cotton paper. Signed. / 8"x12"

Image Description: Electric Boogie / Main Image

Artist + Connor McManus

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I am a mixed media artist and architect based in Minneapolis. I fell in love with artmaking while growing up in Lafayette, LA, where my mom let me mural my whole bedroom. After studying art at Brown University, I moved to New Orleans, where I practiced art alongside a career in architecture and design. I have an abiding love for nature, and much of my work is an attempt to crystallize the power and grace of trees and wonderful interplay of life in my garden. Another branch of my work plays with space-generating patterns and repetition.

I love to travel with my wife, Antonia. During these trips, I gather photographic inspiration, and later collage together the rhythms, textures, and colors of what we encountered. The artwork that results from my travels carries a sense of memory - of looking back on something no longer 'accurate' but tinged with color and emotion, conveying some sense of the complex layering of both sensory input, mood and internal monolog we always balance within ourselves. What was that feeling, for instance, of standing in the Sagrada Familia, staring at the waterfall of green, yellow, orange light pouring through some unseen window while feeling the impossible vaults above me, of having arrived and knowing we are soon to leave? Or of rambling through the woods over Trastevere, a shady escape from the baking city below? Antonia appears in many of my pieces. She is the stand-in for the traveler, the explorer, the seeker. She gives a sense of scale to the world of the piece and provides a point of view from which to inhabit it.

My interest in space led me to pursue a dual Masters in Architecture and Landscape Architecture at the University of Minnesota. I love my work as an architect, which allows me to inhabit spatial possibilities and set up spatial conditions for people to connect with natural wonder.

My work spans from abstract painting to digital collage and mixed media. I live in Minneapolis with my wife Antonia and our daughter.

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