Featured Artist | Jackie Clark Mancuso
Amsterdam Canal Scene- Reflections on the water of an Amsterdam Canal lined with boats and houses.
Our team at Artfully Walls can't get enough of the warm, talented, and humble Jackie Clark Mancuso. Her cheerful paintings, illustrations, and children's books celebrate the beauty in everyday life and make us want to reach for our passports. We sat down with the artist to learn more about her life, love of travel, and creative process.
Jackie on vacation in Greece, 2018.
THE ARTFUL REVIEW: We’re such big fans of your work and particularly admire your charming scenes of European cities. Can you tell us a bit about the places you’ve lived and traveled that have inspired your work?
Jackie’s father, Von Whitlock, was a successful jazz musician who instilled a love of France and French culture in Jackie at a young age.
JACKIE CLARK MANCUSO: I grew up in L.A. with my mother and grandmother. As a kid I traveled to Mexico and Nevada. My father moved to Paris as a Fulbright scholar to study classical music when I was very young. When he returned to the U.S., he was often on the road as a working jazz musician. When in L.A., he took me to foreign films, jazz clubs, arranged guitar lessons, encouraged my singing, and gave me art books and records. He instilled in me a love of France and French culture. I finally went to France with friends after I graduated from UC Berkeley. I’ve lived in New York City, San Francisco, and for a few dreamy months in Paris when my husband, Stephen, was on sabbatical.
I’ve had the good fortune to travel to many places. China, England, France, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Isle of Man, Italy, Jamaica, Mexico, Morocco, Netherlands, Portugal, Russia, Spain, Sweden, Turkey. Next on my list is Scotland! Inspired by one of my favorite films, Local Hero, a film I love for its beautiful scenery, quirky characters, and magic realism.
Von Whitlock, Paris, 1961.
Three girls looking out the window of a Paris apartment in autumn.
Jackie and her mother on Thanksgiving.
Jackie’s studio at her home in Pacific Palisades.
AR: In the absence of travel during the pandemic, have you found new ways to gather inspiration for your work? How has the pandemic changed your daily life and general pace?
An early pandemic illustration of Hazmat suits in Poland.
JCM: At the beginning of the pandemic, I had difficulty concentrating and was too impatient to paint. I felt frustrated and angry. I remember the day I found an old box of oil pastels in a drawer and began drawing a photo in the newspaper, quickly, and with a lot of pent up energy. This kind of immediate “action” drawing turned into my way back to calming down and painting.
My routine in the studio is listening to a Bill Evans station on Pandora to tune out any distraction. When my husband started working from home during the pandemic I found it hard to focus. His office and my studio are adjacent. He was teaching on zoom and doing remote interviews for a documentary film. Headphones solved the problem and we did enjoy taking a daily walk together up the hill or down to the beach.
I actually was inspired by travel last summer. After vaccination and before the Delta, we traveled to Folegandros where we had been before and the owners of the small hotel had become friends. And to a remote mountain village in Amorgos, recommended by friends, where our neighbors were sheep and goats.
I was also inspired and sustained by the community of artists on Instagram. And the thousands of photos in my “to paint” folder.
AR: Tell us about Hudson! When did you become an author and what inspired you to write children's books?
JCM: A good friend of mine got a puppy, whom she named Hudson, just before we went to Paris on a sabbatical in 2010. I loved being in Paris, and I was fine when I was out with Stephen who did all the talking. He’s fluent. But when I went out alone, because I couldn’t express myself in French, my personality disappeared and I felt lost. Inspired by watching the dogs play and make friends in Luxembourg Gardens, I made it Hudson’s story.
AR: Where do you enjoy staying in Paris, and can you tell us a few of your top must-see sights, shops and restaurants?
JCM: For years I stayed on the left bank near Saint Sulpice. During the sabbatical we had an apartment near Bon Marché which was great for food shopping at La Grande Epicerie and the Raspail food market. The last few years we‘ve been staying in the 14th, a residential neighborhood which is not a tourist destination. It’s an apartment that was the home of Stephen’s uncle, Nicolas de Staël, a painter revered in Europe, but not well known in the U.S. If you haven’t heard of him, I encourage you to look at his work.
To see: Musée Marmottan, Quai Branly, Le Musée d’art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature. Going to a play at Comedie Française. Relaxing around the fountain at Palais Royale. Galerie Martine Gossieaux on rue de l’Université for exhibitions of Sempé and Jean Philippe Delhomme.
Shopping: The Red Wheelbarrow for Penelope Fletcher’s insightful book recommendations, Marché d’Aligre for the Sunday flea market. On my last trip, I scored a beautiful pair of vintage Heschung boots. Les Toiles du Soleil on rue du Bac for home textiles.
Food: Chez Omar, Au Passage, La Mascotte. Drinks: Café de l'Industrie near bastille, Café de la Marie across from St Sulpice, La Rotonde on Blvd. Montparnasse.
AR: We love the seascapes you paint from your home in Castellammare. Has living by the ocean influenced your work?
JCM: A wall of 5-lite French doors looks out on the Pacific and I can walk to the beach in five minutes. Living by the ocean is like being part of nature. The light, the clouds, and the colors of the sky change throughout the day. I wake up to a deep orange and indigo sky, which shifts to cobalt blue or icy silver blue or a wall of white fog. At night we see a wall of midnight blue dotted by the tiny lights of cargo ships parked at sea. When I wake up in the middle of the night I hear the waves. It’s as close to paradise as we’ll get.
