Nancy Manter

Why this artist matters now

Nancy Manter is an American visual artist based on the East Coast. Her paintings, drawings and photographs of temporal works are inspired by physical processes and properties of the earth and capture qualities such as movement, disruption and ephemerality. Although generally abstract and rooted in formal aspects of picture-making, her translations of the shifting dynamics of weather and environment function as metaphors for human experience in a precarious world, suggesting themes regarding interdependence, memory as a vehicle for critique, and the fate of the planet. Critic Stephen Maine observed, Manter's work "expresses an attitude toward the world, predicated on a belief in the efficacy of images in conveying meaning. That worldview, it seems to me, is a hybrid of curiosity and caution. Manter is curious about conflict—in fact, she relies on conflict of various kinds to give rise to the drama, the pictorial momentum, in her work."

Source: Moma Bulk 2026 05 04 · Trust score: 92% · Updated 27d ago