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Ad Code: 3
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"Eeyore" 2011
22" x 28", acrylic on paper
Artwork images are copyright of the artist or assignee
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This biography from the Archives of AskART:
| The following, submitted February 2005 and updated March 2007, is from the artist.
Born
in rural Greensburg, Pennsylvania, Irene Collins Neal grew up with a
love for the rolling hills and open farmlands that surrounded her. She
and her brother, Donald, were inspired by their mother, Betsey Mann, a
poet and by their father, Oliver Shupe Collins a country banker. Neal's
great love for her surroundings and how to describe them first surfaced
in poetry, then in music, and finally in sculpture and painting.
After
graduating from Wilson College in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania in 1958
she married Paul Whitaker Neal and for the next 20 years lived, worked
and studied in Puerto Rico, Brazil, Portugal and Argentina, with
intervals of stateside residencies in Morristown, New Jersey, Ft.
Lauderdale, Florida, Memphis, Tennessee and Philadelphia.
As
the curator Sue Scott has written.... "Half her adult life has been
spent abroad with her husband Paul and the images gleaned from these
experiences-- underwater diving in a phosphorescent sea, the colossal
statues of Egypt, river trips deep into the Amazon--has remained a
visual memory that has fed her work."
While in New Jersey, in
1971 she studied with Nicholas Reale, A.W.S. who introduced her to
innovative techniques with watercolors, such as razor blade paintings
on foam core board.
Two other professors were Edwin Havas,
A.W.S. and W.Carl Burger. During the period in Ft. Lauderdale, she
learned a great deal from Miles Batt, A.W.S., always challenged from
realism to the abstract in conventional and non conventional processes.
While
living in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Neal studied with Professor Sandro
Donatello Teixeiro at the School of Visual Arts which was highlighted
by a one person show of 26 of her works on paper at the Planetarium of
Rio.
Two important years of study were spent at the University
of Memphis in Tennessee with Professor Dick Knowles as head of the Art
Department. For the first time she explored 3 dimensional construction
in various materials....all of which expanded her vision, freedom, and
love of color.
In 1982 Neal, her husband and their children,
Paul and Betsey, moved to Wilton, Connecticut. There she was introduced
to Steven Brent and Roy Lerner who were using the new acrylic gels.
Scott wrote, "In laying a large canvas on the floor and slathering gel
and color on it, Neal was able to achieve the texture and surface she
had been searching for in her work. From that point on she never looked
back."
At this time she met Lucy Baker and Kenworth W.
Moffett, who gave great support in this new creative way of painting.
Their individual inspiration is reflected in the birth of the group
known as The New New Painters, a widely exhibited group of which Neal
was one of the earliest members. Moffett would add later, "With this
medium Neal was able to paint large, free form abstract paintings which
aspire to capture a miraculously frozen moment in the flow of paint."
Donald
Kuspit has said,"There is indeed a sense of strong, unembarrassed
libidinous fervor and voluptuousness in Neal's paintings, which one is
tempted to say is primitively female -- evidence for the kind of
Dionysianism symbolized by the maenad..........she has found a way of
extending modernist painting by extending the sense of the feelings it
can expose....she seems to will the surge of colors--primary and earth
colors-- out of the surrounding blackness, an emotional as well as an
aesthetic triumph of painting."
Neal lives in Old Saybrook,
Connecticut where her studio is located. Her vision of the world
is constantly nourished by study tours and environmental volunteer
projects that she and her husband participate in worldwide ..Tahiti,
Honduras, Scotland, Israel, Egypt, Mexico, Canada, England, Belgium,
France, Sicily, China, Russia, Morocco.......
PERMANENT COLLECTION
National Gallery of Prague, Czech Republic
The Planetarium of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Westmoreland Museum of Art, Greensburg, Pa.
Newport Harbor Art Museum, Newport Beach, Ca.
The Hoover Institution of Stanford University, Stanford, Ca.
21st Century Master Art Works, New York City
Museum of New New Museum, Toronto, Ca.
Columbia University, New York City
The Denver Center For The Performing Arts, Cenver, Co.
Museum of Art, Ft. Lauderdale, Fl.
Flint Institute of Arts, Flint, Mi.
Center For The Arts, Vero Beach, Fl.
Alamo Rent-A-Car, Ft. Lauderdale. Fl.
Edmonton Art Gallery, Edmonton, Ca.
The Population Institute, Capitol Hill, Washington, D.C.
The Ocean Conservancy, Washington, D.C.
The Appleton Museum of Art, Ocala, Fl.
Wilson College, Chambersburg, Pa.
Neal's painting, The Outer Cliff, was featured in the winter edition, 2007, of the magazine, New England Watershed.
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| ** If you discover credit omissions or have additional information to add, please let us know at registrar@AskART.com. |
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