William Manning was born in 1936 in Lewiston, Maine.  He was educated in local schools and then attended the Portland School of Art (now the Maine College of Art).  He went on to become a teacher there, after a short stint in New York City where he became familiar with, and an advocate for, abstract expressionism.  Over the years he has become a highly accomplished colorist, this after spending time early in his career painting in only black and white.  Compositionally, he strives for a successful integration of geometric and organic elements within each painting.

After many years of college teaching, a MacDowell Colony Fellowship (1965), the first National Endowment for the Arts artist grant awarded to a Maine artist (1975), and dozens of solo shows in America and Europe, the artist still ventures out to Monhegan Island, ten miles off the coast of Maine, on an annual basis – over forty years and counting – to nourish his painter’s soul.  Still the proud painter, he works every day.

Arts writer Philip M. Isaacson has written the following about Bill’s recent work:

Monhegan has been Manning’s pulse since 1964.  It is present in all his work, more in personality than in form.  It is particularly evident in the shards – the torn [paper] pieces – that he introduces into the large bordered works.  They constitute streaks of color and provide a robust counterpoint to the insistence of his geometry. .  .  .

Manning’s basic geometry is severe.  It is linear and controlling when it is applied to edges of the work.  It sometimes enters the field of the work, at times to subdivide, at times to create inner enclosures, at times to form color codes that replicate or amplify the principal colors in the field of the work.

. . . William Manning is a master of extravagant color.  Through experience we have learned that strict geometry pairs well with a reticence of color.  Here we are taught that it doesn’t have to be so.  The tension between the
engineered embrace of the geometry and the outward pressure from the lavish
color is explosive. . . .

Manning’s paintings, through their combinations of innate form, collage additions and compelling color have an emotional scale unique to them.  They are the work of a painter of great consequence.

click here to view: William Manning - Nighduc