Antonio Mancini worked in Rome and Naples in the late 1800s, and painters have been learning from him ever since. His brushwork alone is a master class, thick and confident, laid down with a kind of nerve most of us spend a lifetime chasing.
This small study started as an attempt to think the way he thought. I'll often begin a piece like this by trying to get inside another artist's head, which has a funny way of getting me out of my own. It never stays a copy for long. Somewhere in the process the painting starts pulling in its own direction, and I follow it, carrying along whatever I managed to glean from Mancini on the way.
What you're looking at is part homage, part departure, and entirely the result of spending time with a painter who still has plenty to teach.
Study After Mancini
Antonio Mancini worked in Rome and Naples in the late 1800s, and painters have been learning from him ever since. His brushwork alone is a master class, thick and confident, laid down with a kind of nerve most of us spend a lifetime chasing.
This small study started as an attempt to think the way he thought. I'll often begin a piece like this by trying to get inside another artist's head, which has a funny way of getting me out of my own. It never stays a copy for long. Somewhere in the process the painting starts pulling in its own direction, and I follow it, carrying along whatever I managed to glean from Mancini on the way.
What you're looking at is part homage, part departure, and entirely the result of spending time with a painter who still has plenty to teach.