Patrick Neal

Born on December 31, 1966 in Troy, New York.

Lives and works in New York City.

Education

• Yale University School of Art, New Haven, CT, Master of Fine Art, Painting and Printmaking, 1994

• Yale Summer School of Music and Art, Norfolk, CT, Summer 1991

• New York Studio School, New York, NY, Certificate, 1989-1992

• Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Skowhegan, ME, Summer 1989

• The College of Saint Rose, Albany, NY, Bachelor of Science, 1985-1989

• New School University, Computer Instruction Center, New York, NY 1999-2000

Teaching/Curating Experience

• Curator of the Chocolate Factory Gallery, Long Island City, NY, Spring Season 2007.

• School of Visual Arts, New York, NY, Semester guest lecturer, Basic Graphic Design, Fall 1998

• Caldwell College, Caldwell, NJ, Faculty replacement, Figure Drawing and Introductory Painting, Spring 1997

• Yale University School of Art, New Haven, CT, Teaching Assistant to Professor Stuart Elster,

Introductory Drawing 1994 

One Person Exhibitions

• Selected Works-The Italian Academy at Columbia University, New York, NY, June 2007

• Floors and Walls- new paintings, The Chocolate Factory, Long Island City, NY, May 2007

• Patrick Neal-New Paintings, SIP, 998 Amsterdam Ave., New York, NY, January 2007

• Nightfishing, New Paintings by Patrick Neal, The Chocolate Factory, Long Island City, NY, February 2006

• "Floral Systems, Patrick Neal Paintings 1994-1998", The Ansonia Building Gallery at Shneyer & Shen,

New York, NY, March 1999

• "4 views of a Chinese Vase" at Karma lounge, New York, NY, November 1997

• "Flower Paintings" at Rodney Telford as part of the 1997 Downtown Arts Festival, New York, NY, September 1997

Selected Group Exhibitions

• The Institute Show presented by The Albany Underground Artists, The Albany Institute of History & Art, Albany, NY, September 2005

• "Outer Boroughs", curated by Paul Ha and Lauren Ross, White Columns, New York, NY, October 1999

• "Depiction", curated by Graham Nickson, First Street Gallery, New York, NY, January 1999

• "A Skowhegan Decade 1987-1997, Alumni Exhibition and Benefit Auction, David Beitzel Gallery,

New York, NY, September 1998

• "1997 Invitational", Edge Gallery, Denver, CO, February 1997

• "Juan Iribarren, Robert Kobayashi, Patrick Neal, paintings", Moe's Meat Market, New York, NY, November 1996

• "New Talent", Alpha Gallery, Boston, MA, June 1994

• "A Change of Perception", New York Studio School, New York, NY, July 1994

Honors and Awards

• Semifinalist, The Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition 2006, Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC,

• Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation, Inc. Grant, 1995

• Ingram Merrill Foundation Award, 1995

• Elizabeth Canfield Hicks Award, Yale University, 1994

• Revson Scholarship, New York Studio School, 1991-1992

• Skowhegan School of Art Scholarship, 1989

My work changes stylistically from painting to painting in terms of the subject matter; comprising self portrait, portraiture and still life, but the bodies of work I produce deal with the same over arching ideas.

To others, I’ve referred to my recent paintings as a sort of “Cubism for dummies.” They all share the grid as a common unifying factor–grounding them, but also allowing them to be pushed in all sorts of directions. I believe matter can shift in and out of modes of representation ie.–there are different ways to depict things and different ways things come into being (abstraction, Cubism’s system of multiple views, cyberspace etc.) In some cases I investigate simple changes in vantage point or environment that feel somehow “right” for the particular subject matter, whereas with some of the tabletop stillife’s, there is a closer investigation of the effect of multiple perspectives in the experience of an object.

My most recent paintings are derived from tabletop objects, photographs and my own drawings. Ordinary studio objects of vases, fruit, cloths, and pictures; the paintings have less to do with the subject matter and its potential meanings/narratives but rather, the subject matter of the work is the phenomenological, tactile and kinesthetic investigations these objects allow for. In one sense I feel my paintings to be abstractions rather than representational, in that I prioritize the process of making the picture and visually describing the objects as filtered through my sensory experience of them, rather than creating a likeness or even noticeing the identity of what it is I’m looking at. The assemblages and mini installations that are my stiillifes, I see more as opportunities to study, capture and compose physical properties–air, matter, shade, light, space, color and their relation to the temporal. The process of interpreting a cluster of static flowerpots and vases is, despite how calm it may appear, a tumultuous act–a microcosm of all the chaos and simultanaeity confronting us in real time in the world.

Modernism, from Manet to the Abstract Expressionists, is made up of a variety of movements that were essentially scientific and yielded myriad painting styles. These styles, loaded with the uniqueness of their particular idioms-ie. Fauvism, Surrealism, Impressionism, Cubism etc.–and their contemporary regard as archaic can be adopted at will as tools themselves. It is Modernism’s preoccupation with the phenomenological, and its eventual running itself into the ground along this path, that I find endlessly thought-provoking. Though I have been schooled in Modernism, and am deeply indebted to continuing to try to understand its various “isms”, I also question its limitations and ponder what other possibilities for painting may exist.

Recently I have been considering an earlier time in my past when the expressive quality of physical paint was critical–the ability of formal qualities of the paint to capture the “authenticity” of a unique person as portrait, or moment in time in the case of a still life. Sometimes in my compositions, I am thinking of the late paintings of Braque and his radical fracturing. This fracturing results from the tension between working within the limitations of the two dimensional picture plane, while confronting the third dimension.

“The phenomenal thing is not the unchanging object of the natural sciences, but a correlate of our body and its sensory functions.”

–Merleau Ponty