When creating a painting, artists are often drawn to things like people, animals or the majestic beauty of the landscape.
Geneva resident Ed Manning says for him, 20-plus years of laying asphalt and working on a highway crew made him look toward the road.
The 68-year-old Manning admits while others paint more predictable images, the former construction worker has focused on subjects like traffic lights, boxcars littered with graffiti, buildings and other scenes that have struck him as he’s worked and traveled along the road.
“I worked for 21 years in the asphalt-paving business for the Harry W. Kuhn company out of West Chicago. I started out by shoveling asphalt and by the time they went out business and I retired, I had been a project manager/superintendent,” Manning said. “I started working in the construction business in my late 20s but before that I was in retail flooring, selling tile and linoleum and after I retired, I became the stay-at-home parent.”
Manning said with three children that all needed various degrees of attention, his wife Kathryn soldiered on as a global business consultant while he became the stay-at-home dad who did volunteer work and was the neighborhood organizer, Scout leader, baseball coach and “the one who would come to read to the kids at school.”
His painting acumen began back in his youth when Manning, like many others of his generation, said he “was into music” and especially liked vinyl records and the epic album covers they were housed in.
“When I was a kid, I was really into music and would sit and copy album covers. It was such a wonderful medium that kids don’t get to experience these days,” Manning said.
One of the famous album cover illustrators he was drawn to was Roger Dean, who drew the famous jacket covers for the group Yes, which continue to be almost as famous as the band’s music.
“The guy that does all the album covers for the group Yes – Roger Dean – I love that guy. I actually own three or four Roger Dean signed prints and I used to copy those album covers and give them away to girls to get them to like me and I’d never see them again,” Manning said. “So, I started when I was a kid and then life got in the way and I had a job and kids and never got a chance to do that.
“When I retired and had some time on my hands, my wife said, why don’t you go back to school? You like to draw, you like to paint, so I was very encouraged by my wife,” he said.
Manning went back to school and nearly finished an associate’s degree in art, but family issues that came up again took precedence over completing his course work.
“We have three children with varying degrees on the spectrum but today they are all functioning adults,” he said. “I was three classes away from an associate’s degree in fine arts – we had some issues at home that needed more attention, so I just let it go. At one point, I felt lesser than a lot of people who had degrees and later thought, what’s the big deal? It was just a place to go and paint.”
Manning said his rediscovery of painting began more than a decade ago and he has since gone on to create nearly two dozen paintings. A few, he said, have been sold and the rest “are hanging in my living room.”
“For me, I’m a person who’s always on a five-year plan and so for five or maybe seven years, I painted and drew really heavy and then something else caught my attention,” he said. “I got involved with this local running group and went from running a few minutes to a couple of marathons at one point. I tend to move on to things in my life.”
Manning’s wife Kathryn expresses nothing but positivity about her husband’s renewed artistic interest while sitting in their living room with a huge vaulted ceiling and walls adorned with his work.
She adds that her husband’s five-year plans doesn’t bother her.
“I was absolutely glad he was able to renew his passion and you see how beautiful his artwork is,” she said. “I’m happy he did. We get a lot of joy from seeing his artwork and it’s interesting too.”
One of Manning’s more unique creations is a traffic light that caught his attention and became a painting that also included a blueprint he drew in the background.
“The traffic light that I turned into a blueprint – I’m very observant. I’m not the kind of person that just goes through life not paying attention. I pay attention and I’d be out on the job and I’d see this hundred-year-old traffic signal and think, wow, that’s pretty awesome, I wonder how they came about? I wonder how they started?” he said. “I’d take a picture of a traffic signal and I’d paint that.
“I was at the railroad crossing in Geneva one time and I thought, that railroad crossing looks pretty interesting. I took a picture of it and I painted it,” he said.
Trains, Manning said, have also captured his imagination.
“Boxcars – I love the graffiti art on boxcars and I did a couple of paintings with trains in them. One thing led to another,” he said. “I had a friend with a job at Fermilab and he brought me a picture of that and I painted Fermilab at dawn. A guy in Mokena sent me a picture of a barn – it was pretty boring – it was just a barn and snow so I painted that and started getting a little inventive and put a row of trees in and I put some snowdrifts and I showed the picture to him when it was all done and he said that’s not the picture he gave me. He was all ticked off, but it was the picture I saw, so things grow and morph into something else.”
Kathryn has dabbled a bit in art herself by continuing to paint her husband’s Converse high top sneakers, a model of shoe Ed says he has worn for 50 years.
“When we got married, I asked Ed if he had black shoes and later when we were walking up the aisle he had on black-and-white Converse,” she said. “He has loved them his whole life and I have painted a least a dozen pairs. I tried to do one every year for Father’s Day but I got behind.”
Gardening has also caught the attention of the Mannings, who together have created a variety of themed gardens in their back yard including a butterfly garden, a shade garden, a bicycle garden and the “back 40 which is wild and untamed.”
They say there is a synergy among Ed’s paintings, the Converse sneakers and the gardening “since it’s all art – it follows a pattern.”
“We’re not master gardeners but any stretch of the imagination but we enjoy it. It’s something we can do together. We’re a team Kathryn and I and we tackle all these projects together. She’s a wonderful life partner,” he said. “Gardening is one of a lot of things we do together.”
David Sharos is a freelance reporter for The Beacon-News.
