Madeleine van Manen
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Madeleine van Manen paints in various mediums, ranging from oils to gouache and pastel, mixed medium and printmaking.
After graduating with a Diploma in Fine Art (Painting) from the Port Elizabeth Technikon (now Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University) in 1988, she spent many years working as a graphic designer in the printing industry and at an educational institution, after which she moved to Cape Town and worked in the advertising industry. In 2009 she was able to focus on painting again when she briefly lived in Pretoria.
Returning to Cape Town in 2012, Madeleine now works as a full-time artist from her studio in the city centre and is also an art teacher at the Lycée Français du Cap.
She is a painter and printmaker who currently works with two main themes, namely cityscapes and forest scenes.
Van Manen moved into her inner-city studio on a busy street in Cape Town in 2018, where her large windows present views of city buildings and a large part of Table Mountain. The references for her current cityscapes include the views from her studio window, thus created in situ. Her purpose is to not replicate an image in all its detail. She responds to her city environment and her trips into the mountains through personal reflection and emphasis on the mood of a moment. By eliminating elements that she deems non-essential, she creates images of silence where you would expect noise, leading to a feeling of isolation and solitude, seemingly contradictory, yet easily felt in a large and busy metropolis.
You will find no entourage in her paintings, only the fundamental information she deems of purpose for a specific composition. Seeking out details that only peak for a moment, a complex image is constructed after significant editing.
Van Manen approaches her landscape and forest paintings with the same sense - of the silence of forests easily associated with serenity and isolation.
Creating from the concept of momentary glances, Van Manen works with colour in a minimalistic way, in order to seek and inspire that sense of stillness.
