Haley Manchon
Haley Manchon grew up outside of Philadelphia and received her BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2018. She is represented by MK Apothecary Gallery, and has her work on display at The People’s Store in Lambertville, New Jersey. She has recently exhibited at Aqua Art Miami for Art Basel, Art Fair 14C in Jersey City, Arch Enemy Arts in Philadelphia; Surreal Salon 16 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana; the 2022 Derwent Art Prize located at Gallery@OXO in London, England; the 12th Annual International Drawing Discourse at UNC Asheville, North Carolina; and with the Colored Pencil Society of America.
Collect Bean: Tell us about a time when you felt you found your groove as an artist.
Haley Manchon: This year has felt a bit like that, honestly! I didn’t make a lot of pieces last year, and I took my time with the few that actually got finished. It was also a period of reflection, trying to understand what my work was saying and how I could better convey it. It wasn’t until October that something finally clicked, and I began writing and sketching ideas for the work I’m making this year. Exploring ways to articulate the meaning behind this new work has been my driving force in 2024.
Collect Bean: How do you think your work has evolved?
Haley Manchon: Following undergrad, a shift began in how I defined a 'good drawing' for myself. The crux of my work had been technique and process for a long time. There was a narrative through-line, but I didn’t feel personally connected to what I was making. In the following years, I focused more on the use of dura-lar and layering, drawing distorted portraits and figures as a means to represent the passage of time, shifts in ourselves, and so on. However, more recently, my personal feelings have been put in the forefront - and the technique, process, and experimentation are now tools that dig into how I can communicate those feelings in my drawings.
Collect Bean: Are there any recurring themes or motifs in your art, and if so, what do they represent to you?
Haley Manchon: Forget-me-nots have been showing up in all my drawings this year. My work is about shyness, wanting to be both seen and hidden at the same time. The symbolism within the forget-me-nots shifts for me depending on the piece. The flowers are an offering of friendship and my desire to form relationships with the people around me. But they are also fragile and wilting - a fear that if I don't extend them out, time will pass, and the opportunity to offer them will fade. They serve as a reminder: to avoid being forgotten, I need to make an effort to express my feelings more openly.
Collect Bean: How do you balance your practice with your daily life?
Haley Manchon: I work as a graphic designer in Philly. I commute to and from the city via train, which I love because that’s about 40 minutes each way, which can be dedicated to sketching, planning ideas, reading, or just decompressing. Once I’m home for the day, I have dinner and then draw. Weekends allow me longer work sessions, but I still try to do other things in between! I burnt myself out five years ago by not allowing time for other things, so I’ve been getting better at letting life happen. I’ve been telling myself that drawing shouldn’t be my entire life but rather a response to the life that I’m living. The balance of input and output has been really nice lately.
Collect Bean: Are there any artists or movements that have inspired or influenced your work?
Haley Manchon: James Jean has been by far my biggest inspiration in the last decade, but I’m also really into Inka Essenhigh, Sasha Gordon, and Arghavan Khosravi right now. Their work is different from each other, but they all have strong foundational skills that are used as a springboard for creating compelling narratives, characters, and figurative pieces. They’re consistently learning and expanding their practice, and I find that to be incredibly inspiring.
I also have a deep love for Ukiyo-e, Japanese woodblock prints, and Mary Cassatt’s prints, which they inspired. I just saw Mary Cassatt’s show at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and was delighted to find some pieces I hadn’t seen before! In Ukiyo-e and Cassatt's work, I'm captivated by the strong compositions, delicately balanced by flat planes of color, the intricate patterning, and the crisp linework.
