Born 1959, Mick Manning is an artist, writer and illustrator who grew up and went to school in Haworth and Keighley. His father was Charles Manning, a local teacher and freelance artist.
In 1978 he attended the Foundation Course in Art and Design at Bradford College before completing a Graphic Design Degree at the University of Northumbria and an MA at the Royal College of Art, where he studied illustration and animation. In 1990 he was invited to establish and teach a B.A. degree programme in Illustration at the Glasgow School of Art, where he was Course Leader until resigning in 1998.
Mick became one of Bradford’s ‘175 Heroes’ (Bradford College) and was later awarded an Honorary Fellowship by Bradford College in 2015 . He gave the graduation speech at St George’s Hall that year and, in 2021, he gifted three of his paintings to Cliffe Castle Museum in recognition of the influence the museum had on his childhood.
Goshawk (Godfrey & Watt Gallery), by courtesy of Mick Manning
C is for Canis Lupis’, from ‘Near the Bear North’.
Mick is allied with the artist’s collective, St. Jude’s, and is represented by Edinburgh’s Open Eye Gallery, where he regularly exhibits. He has exhibited three times at Bradford’s Yorkshire Craft Centre and is a regular exhibitor at Godfrey and Watt’s gallery annual winter exhibition in Harrogate. The artworks in his own recent book Near the Bear North (Design for Today) and those commissioned for Mya-Rose Craig’s Bird Girl (Penguin) both celebrate the often neglected medium of pochoir stencil.
In the field of children’s books, Mick collaborates with his partner the Swedish-born painter Brita Granström, often drawing on his own Yorkshire roots for inspiration. His Carnegie Medal-nominated Tail-End Charlie (Frances Lincoln) was about his father’s RAF war service, while The Brontes, Children of the Moors (Watts) begins with his experience of playing the haunted shepherd boy (alongside Anne Stallybrass) in the BBC’s 1967 production of Wuthering Heights.
Over the years he and his partner, Brita, have won a number of book awards including: ‘The Times Educational Supplement Award’, the ‘Silver Smarties Award’, five English Association Awards and five Royal Society Awards. In 2008 they were invited by Quentin Blake to contribute to The Birthday Book (Random House), a celebration of Prince Charles’ 60th birthday and in aid of The Prince’s Foundation for Children and the Arts.
He gifted also three of his paintings to Cliffe Castle Museum in recognition of the influence the museum had on his childhood, including ‘Badger’, shown below.
Most recently Mick and Brita have worked with the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust on a range of gifts to celebrate both William Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway, including a decorative silk scarf.
Mick Manning still lives and works in the north of England, as well as in Sweden.
Barn Owl. Image: Godfrey & Watt Gallery by courtesy of Mick Manning
Artist Contact: Instagram: mickmanning.rca