About

Artist Statement

Paul William Manlove is a university professor and practicing artist whose work is rooted in the tradition of perceptual painting. He has taught at Brooklyn College, Millersville University, and Elizabethtown College, and has been serving on the faculty at Penn State Harrisburg since 2007. From 2007 to 2011, he also worked as Director of the Morrison Gallery and the Gallery Lounge, supporting student and community engagement through exhibition programming.

Manlove’s artistic practice is informed by his studies with Bob Andriulli, Lennart Anderson and Stanley Lewis, and reflects a twentieth-century approach to looking—one grounded in sustained observation, attentiveness to light, and the lived experience of perception. Working primarily with water-based media such as watercolor and gouache, his paintings emphasize immediacy, sensitivity, and the material honesty of the medium. These works resist spectacle in favor of quiet intensity, inviting viewers into a slower, more deliberate act of seeing.

While Manlove has exhibited in commercial galleries including The Painting Center in New York City and Lancaster Galleries in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, his current focus is on alternative and non-institutional spaces. His exhibitions at venues such as Stand4 Gallery in Brooklyn reflect an interest in unacademic contexts that allow artwork to exist outside traditional art-world expectations.

In addition to studio practice, Manlove is committed to community-oriented projects that seek to engage the public beyond conventional gallery environments. These projects aim to position art as a shared experience—one that operates within everyday spaces and encourages direct, human connection. Across both teaching and practice, Manlove’s work is guided by a belief in perception as an active, meaningful process and in art’s capacity to foster awareness, presence, and community.