About the Artist
Manni Nejade
Manni Nejade was born and raised in San Francisco's multi-cultural Mission District, one of the city's most colorful neighborhoods, and it shows in the work. After graduating from Mission High School he entered a painting contest and won first place, along with a summer scholarship to the Academy of Fine Arts in San Francisco. That summer turned into a real art education, which he continued at City College of San Francisco. In December 1983 he enlisted in the United States Air Force. He served his country for more than twenty years, and painting waited for him on the other side of a full military career. Retired now, he puts it simply on his Instagram: "Now I have the luxury to create unique art. " The luxury is time. The shoe paintings that became his signature take countless hours each, and he has the hours to give them. He settled in Las Vegas, where his work hangs in galleries and where his collectors include Raiders players and music artists. Two of his paintings are permanently installed at Allegiant Stadium, home of the Las Vegas Raiders. Ask him what the work is for and he points to the message he put on one of his sculptures: be positive, never quit, manifest your own destiny.
“Manni Nejade grew up in San Francisco's Mission District, served twenty-plus years in the U.S. Air Force, and now spends his days painting. His signature shoe paintings pack canvases edge to edge with layered sneakers and sole-print patterns in loud, saturated color, and take countless hours to complete. Alongside them come Pop Art portraits of the people he admires, from Kobe Bryant to Warhol, Basquiat and Haring, all of it collected by Raiders players and music artists.”
The Process
Inside the Studio
THE PAINTING PROCESS
Step into Manni's Las Vegas studio and you meet the shoe paintings first: canvases covered end to end in overlapping sneaker shapes, every one filled with its own tread pattern, its own color, its own small decision. Nothing on these surfaces is filler. He says it plainly: these paintings take countless hours. Between the big canvases he keeps a steady flow of commission work moving. "Trying my best to finish all my commissions for the gallery. It has been nonstop, " he wrote while finishing a Vegas-inspired spaceman, and the studio runs on that rhythm: finish one, deliver it, start the next. Not everything is flat. He also paints sculpture, adding words to the surface: "It was fun painting and adding words to this sculpture, " he wrote of "Reach for the Stars," a piece meant to remind you to follow your dreams. The palette is Pop Art all the way, hot pinks, electric blues, lime green, the black-and-white of a Warhol or a Haring sitting next to a canvas that explodes in color. "Always be positive and never quit."
