May, 2009

Renewable/Flow Series

Charcoal Drawings

Margaret Neill has created a series of charcoal drawings, each on a sheet of

22 x 30 paper. Working with her signature elliptical forms, drawing widte swaths of rich, velvet blacks on a rubbed and varied grey background to describe movement and flow. The pieces vary from solid forms passing over one another, floating into the space from the sides, or the ellipse becomes the negative space with the black describes the flow between forms

Artist Statement

CIRCUIT - New Paintigs, May 17 - June 20, 2007

A COMPLET AND CLOSED PATH AROUND WHICH A CIRCULATING ELECTRIC CURRENT CAN FLOW.

Circuit denotes a zone, journey, course or convolution. To me, circuit is a way to get to a place. It imagines a path or itinerary that allows one to move all the way around. In this new body of work I circle through ambiguous territory to a charged space. This space is emotional and physical and relates to both the urban and the natural world.

In the periods of rapid transformation such as how we live today, these works seek a way of being that is quiet, continuous and alive. I use color and shape to define an emotional state, and they are a response to everyday life.

My methods are process oriented. I work layer by layer until the image is revealed rather consciously created. The rightness of the form is recognized by the body before it's articulated by the mind.

The work is inspired by natural allusions to water, weather, and geology as well as earth, sea and sky. I like to play with ideas of speed movement and scale. And relate my work to riding a bike. To me, the selective focus in a constantly shifting environment is a perfect analogy to painting.

General Statement

My work emerges from an engagement with my materials and is concerned with neither narrative nor image. The medium becomes the vehicle of my expression of transient but ever present tensions and their resolution through painting. I am interested in using a system of organically derived circular shapes within the rectangular format of the picture plane. I like to investigate the tensions inherent in positive and negative interplay as well as shapes that appear and disappear beneath the surface of the picture plane.

I work intuitively with no prearranged sketches or plan. I am interested in inventing shape and layering color. I am compelled to follow an edge to see where it can reside in an interesting way. This involves risk as one exploration may lead to new discoveries while another to complete dissolution. I set up problems or unlikely juxtapositions and then try to resolve the conflicts I see through the painting process. Generally my ideas are one step ahead of what I am capable of achieving so that I am continually drawn ahead to future possibilities.

To me, painting is a way of making maps to a place no other process gives access to. It's a means of giving shape to complex feelings and ideas. It is a way of being, where experience is transformed from within and manifested in material form. I relate my work to my experience of living in an urban environment--a context of shifting energy, potential, and light; also to speed and scale. Like when riding a bike, the eye sees a constantly transforming landscape on a shifting ground. It is a process of exploring perception. For me it is a life process, an awareness of being, a way of thinking made palpable.

Margaret Neill, New York City

2006

Margaret Neill, born in Ohio, lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.  Neill earned an MFA degree at Brooklyn College and has exhibited work in a variety of settings including the Cleveland Center for Contemporary Art, the Monastery Plazy in the Czech Republic and the Central Library of Brooklyn.

Neill was an artist in residence at Hiram College in Ohio, where she did a 40 foot wall drawing, and a visiting instructor at Middlebury College in Vermont. IN 2004 Neill showed monoprints at the International Print Center of New York, and Lancaster Museum of Art in PA, and paintings at Hofstra University Museum.   Neill’s work is in public and private collections including Colby College Museum of Art, The New York Public Library, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, and Pfizer. 

Monotype Statement

These monotypes were made at Pelavin Editions in nine days in May and June 2003. I came to this particular project without any preconceived notions of what I would do and how I would undertake the new process of making monotypes. I responded with the available materials, the surrounding environment, and limitations of the process.

The major limitation being that I would be painting on a plastic plate instead of paper, and would not handle the paper at all. And the fact that I was expected to make prints during the time I was there. Since I am very process oriented I enjoy exploring new mediums, places and people, these initial limitations turned into motivations to overcome.

My abstract works carry references to nature. They refer to the atmosphere of weather, the color of earth, sea, and sky, and the experience of living in an urban environment and moving through space. These monotypes have a feeling of light, air, space, speed and slowness, and are a response to my emotional and physical reality during the printing process. The titles derive from words that relate to this experience.

Margaret Neill, New York City

2003