The art of Totte Mannes

Totte Mannes thinks about her work as 'series' - her painting evolves gradually from one broad theme and style to another over a period of time and paintings from a given period belong to the same series.

With the exception of her portraits, all Mannes' paintings are strictly non-figurative. She often gives her paintings descriptive names, but they can be quite whimsical and downright misleading. Her Series should not be emphasized too much - she uses it as a way to rationalise and catalogue her non-figurative work. The Series are just a backdrop, as the atmosphere and feeling of each individual painting can vary hugely between paintings in the same series.

Mannes started in the 1970's by painting crumpled paper, which gradually evolved into stone and mountains. Mountains became parchment - which evolved into sails; sails tore into ribbons, ribbons exploded into multi-coloured leaves.

In addition to her mainstream paintings, Totte also occasionally paints portraits, often combining them with non-figurative elements or collages with other materials (pages from of book, sheet music).

Totte paints in a wide range of canvas sizes and formats. She often breaks a large picture into diptychs or series of canvasses, sometimes up to as many as 12-15. Many of her multi-part works are intended to be moveable, so that the order and position of individual canvasses can be changed around (for example, the 12-part series 'The Calendar' can hung in a variety of formations).

The portfolio comprises representative pieces from various periods and series. The exhibition of the website rotates a comprehensive overview of periods, each rotation remaining for three months. Picture sizes are given in millimetres, measurements in inches are approximate and indicative only.