Virtual Art Tour

Guy Manning, American, born 1936

Challenge on the Water

Guy Manning, born in Philadelphia, spent his summers at the New Jersey seacoast watching the portrait painters on the boardwalks, becoming inspired by them at an early age. By age 12, he was exhibiting his work at the Philadelphia Art Alliance. An honors graduate of Philadelphia’s North Catholic High School, he won a four-year scholarship to the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts.

After graduation, Manning began working as an errand boy for an advertising agency. While serving in the U.S. Army Special Forces states-side, he designed the Green Berets’ uniform. After his discharge, he worked in a small ad agency in Northern California before moving to Seattle. He became art director at Boeing Aircraft soon after arriving in Seattle. In early 1970, Manning left Boeing to join the art colony at Laguna Beach, CA, where he began a portrait painter career.

By the early 1980s, Manning had become a well-paid society portrait artist - a direction at odds with the vision of himself as a fine artist. Manning happened to hear a radio program detailing the lives of the great chiefs of the Native American tribes and it provided direction for his future works. “I didn’t want to do only landscapes. I simply felt most comfortable painting people. My idea was to incorporate real people into western landscape themes . . . that radio program served as the catalyst.”

The faces of real people that fill Manning’s paintings are the result of extensive historical and cultural research carried out by the artist and his family. “Indians,” Manning says, “will come into my work all the time, but you’ll never see me doing cavalry in battle with Indians.” He prefers to present the Indian people as vitally alive rather than simply a part of history.