POSTAL ART
THEY SAY SOME OF THE BEST IDEAS START LIFE ON THE BACK OF AN OLD ENVELOPE – AND MANDY CLEVELAND’S CAPTIVATING DRAWINGS ARE NO EXCEPTION
You might not expect inner city Manchester to provide much inspiration for an artist passionate about wildlife, but Mandy Cleveland is keen to capture images of nature and wildlife in an urban environment. “I’m fascinated by how the natural world and city life co-exist,” she says. “I like spotting plants peeping through concrete or birds sitting on pylons. After all, it’s us invading the natural environment rather than the other way around.”
Just as she feels drawn towards darker and more foreboding environments, the subjects of Mandy’s striking drawings tend to be the grittier urban creatures as opposed to the more gentrified country set. “I like crows, blackbirds, magpies, ravens and the like,” she says. Sketched mainly in black ink, her drawings are “frantic, but also controlled, like the birds themselves” and, rather than using a sketchpad, Mandy chooses to draw on used envelopes. “After I had my daughter, I started
saving envelopes, and then I started doodling on them, and I’ve been doing it ever since.”
Mandy was always drawing as a child and went on to do an art degree; after becoming a mother she decided to give up her job and focus on her drawing. Envelopes seemed the ideal platform for her sketches because they also had a story to tell and brought a human touch to her work. “I’ve always collected things and I like repurposing stuff. I’m particularly drawn to envelopes because they’re a piece of history and represent the passing of time, as my drawings do, too. I like how they might have been used to deliver important news or information. They’re fleeting, somehow, like a bird.”
At first Mandy used to hold on to any she liked the look of that dropped through her letterbox; now she hunts for vintage envelopes at antiques shops and through online research. People who know her work kindly donate them, too. “I have envelopes going right back to 1846,” she says. “Some are harder to draw on than others because of their age. I have to think hard about what I’m going to draw and then obviously there’s the pressure not to make a mistake and ruin it!”
Much of the inspiration for Mandy’s drawings comes from her immediate surroundings, such as the magpie, above, currently nesting in the garden she shares with the other residents of the high-rise where
“I’m particularly drawn to envelopes because they represent the passing of time… They’re fleeting, like a bird”
she lives with her seven-year-old daughter, Hebe. She also enjoys heading out to Sale Water Park, “a wildlife oasis framed by towering pylons and high-rise flats – a place where the city meets the country”. Her majestic black cormorant was captured here, and can often be spotted along with swallows, jackdaws and dragonflies. She sometimes draws from memory or from photos, adding backgrounds for contrasts in texture and shape.
It was a friend of Mandy’s who first suggested she exhibit her drawings, but it took a while for Mandy to believe people would come to look at them in a gallery. “When I was offered the first exhibition, my immediate reaction was that I needed to come up with some new work, but in the end I thought I just have to be brave and honest and show the work that I do. I set about framing my envelope doodles and it turned out to be the right thing to do, as everybody really liked them.”
Now she moves from regular exhibitions to art and craft shows and spends as much time as she can in her studio, where she has several drawings on the go at once. Bringing art into the community is another passion for Mandy and she runs workshops and works on projects for organisations, from schools to local community groups. “I’m keen to show people how much art can enrich their lives,” she says. mandycleveland.com