Marvin Perry Mann

Direct as a Bird's Song

oil, cold wax, mixed media on cradled wood panel

24 x 30 inches

C-lective Curator’s Cut:

Marvin's Direct as a Bird’s Song reflects his practice as a colorist, using a warm and peaceful palette to build an imagined landscape. We see a marsh stretching across the foreground, leading into a body of water and up a hillside that sweeps the eye gently right. Though abstracted, the scene carries the feeling of dawn, when the air is heavy with dew and color begins to lift from the land. The composition carries a quiet musicality, like a bird’s song at daybreak, guiding the eye through the morning scene. Marvin transforms light and atmosphere into a meditation on nature and perception.

Marvin Perry Mann

We Love Marvin. He is a Richmond-based artist who is challenging what we know of as the American landscape painting. He creates immersive abstract experiences, tracing a poetic evolution from realism through impressionism, tonalism, and ultimately into abstraction. He’s doing things in his own, innovative way while giving a nod to classical techniques.

Marvin’s abstract landscapes draw us in through rich layers of color and texture, revealing subtle terrain and shifting emotional moods. As a self-described colorist, his use of light, shadow, and tone replaces recognizable landmarks with a sense of atmosphere and feeling. His work strikes a balance between detail and openness, creating calm, meditative spaces that invite personal reflection and discovery. These landscapes aren’t depictions of real places, but rather imagined environments formed on canvas or board while Marvin reminisces on his favorite moments in nature. They encourage us to pause and reflect on our own connections to the natural world.

“My hope is that the audience will get lost in my paintings and, on reflection, discover something they hadn’t before.”

  • Honorable Mention at the Northern California Arts, Inc. Members Show, Sacramento Fine Arts Center (2025)

    Solo show at ar·ti·fact gallery, Point Richmond, CA titled Sketches of Nod: Imagined Landscapes (2024)

    Numerous features in publications for his work in comic illustration prior to exploring painting.

Interviews in progress, please check back soon!