Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Bryanna Manning. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Bryanna , appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.
I was asked to create a commissioned painting to hang over the fireplace in a client’s (named Lori) new home. After her husband passed away, Lori moved from the home their family built in the woods to a new home on the lake. The painting was commissioned by Lori’s children as a gift to her, to remember their father/husband and to point towards their future with hope. The painting, titled “Towards The Light” visually moves from the woods to the lake to symbolize Lori’s move, both physically and spiritually from the woods to the light. There are two sets of footprints in the sand whose shapes echo those of the clouds in the sky. They show the journey that Lori and Marlin have walked together and they honor the love that will always be. It was so very special to create such a meaningful piece for Lori and her family and I was honored that they invited me to be a part of their story in this way.
Bryanna , before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
I am an artist living and painting in West Michigan, where I am greatly impacted by our proximity to Lake Michigan. I have a deep love for our “third coast” and our family spends most of our summer down at the beautiful beaches of Lake Michigan. As any water lover will tell you, at the shore is where I experience my deepest moments of rest, connection, joy and energy. And so, when I decided to start painting professionally, the lake was a natural subject area for me. Like all natural places, there are many artists who have been inspired by Lake Michigan’s shores and have painted her beauty. What I hope my art does, when I consider it in relation to my inspiration, is reveal a truth about the lake that you feel when you are there, standing at the shore.
It’s a goal that is forefront in my mind as I create: that my work has a strong sense of presence. I want it to remind you of how it felt to be a kid running as fast as you can down the beach, or the peace that comes from staring at the loyal repetition of each wave. That it captures the place of solace away from all of it and the joy of watching the sunset with company you love. It’s these deep feelings of being there that I hope resonate through my work. We all have these shared experiences in nature that can also feel so deeply personal. When someone’s story resonates with my work in a way that feels as if it was made just for them, well that’s the best outcome I could imagine.
How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?
As soon as grown-ups started asking “what do you want to be when you grow up?” I always had a different answer based on what I was interested in at the time. I could genuinely see myself in all these different versions of my life and knew that I could be perfectly happy in many choices. However, even in college when I pursued a “real” major of Communication, I somehow found a way to also manage a double major in studio art. I never dreamed it would be possible to make a career out of it, I wasn’t interested in any type of design, and so I learned to be content with the advice that my fellow art major and friend Claire had shared with me at the time “You’ll always have your art. Other jobs will come and go, but even when you’re 83, you’ll have your art.”
And that was honestly enough for me, for many years, and I kept creating and working and raising a family. Until one day, our family made the life-changing decision to become licensed foster parents. It was a decision that required such bravery and discomfort and embracing of the unknown, that all other decisions lost the weight they used to carry. It was almost as if a switch had flipped in my brain and instead of thinking about painting when I was 83, I began to ask “why don’t I just make this my job now?” And so I started, almost immediately after, to seriously approach my art as a profession and I began to sell my work.
What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?
One of the very biggest gifts in my creative journey has been my friendship with a fellow artist, and really a huge mentor to me, Hope Olson. She is the first person from my “real life” who I knew that was painting and selling her art. I admired her work, who she was as a person, and how she had grown her business. We started meeting, then becoming friends, and she has become such an incredibly influential person to me. One of the drawbacks to being an artist, for me initially, was that it seemed to be such a lonely independent job. All those hours alone working in the studio – and as a social person, I didn’t know if I could do it. However, I greatly underestimated how time flies when you are creating, how much energy being a mom of five young kids takes (and how sacred alone time is), and how having one deep friendship with a fellow creative can provide such a sense of community at work. I am so thankful for Hope, and it’s my not so secret dream that one day we can share an actual physical studio/workspace together.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.bryannamanning.com
- Instagram: @bryannamanningart
- Facebook: @bryannamanningart
Image Credits
Alison Kae Photography (just the image of me was taken by her)