Francisco Manzo

I am a painter of 30 years based out of Boulder, Colorado. I have sold hundreds of works in that time and have work all over the world.

I make portraits of musicians and actors because their songs and films left marks on me I couldn’t shake. Some moments were pure joy — the rush of a song bigger than the room. Others were traumatic, memories I’m still working through. Each painting is titled after the song or movie it springs from. They’re not “cool posters.” They’re my way of celebrating and confronting the impact these works had on me.

I start with photographs because that’s how our time files memory, then I work to break the photo’s spell — searching for less-seen sources, pushing contrast in Photoshop to separate dark from light, then translating that map with brush, aerosol and a hard committed black line. I don’t use stencils. The signature black is deliberate — part comics, part Pop print culture, part my own lineage — and it carries the charge that holds the image together. Every pass can still ruin the piece, and I keep the signs of that risk in the surface.

I took a hiatus from showing. Coming back, I decided to rebuild in Boulder like a shop rebuilds an engine — tear down, clean parts, reassemble for torque. I work in...

I am primarily a self taught artist. I attend the Art institute of Colorado for 3 semesters before I dropped out to pursue just painting.