Patrick Neal holds an MFA from Yale University and attended Yale Norfolk School of Art, New York Studio

School and Skowhegan. He is a 2018 NYFA Artist Fellow in Painting. His 2022 solo exhibition, Ephemeral

Triggers, at The Hotel Belmar in Monteverde, Costa Rica was the culmination of a research-based residency

in that country. Stateside, another solo show, Anonymous Oasis, was on view at Joyce Goldstein Gallery in

Chatham during the Fall of 2023. His solo show Water Paintings will be on view from November 10 through

December 9, 2024 at The Local in Long Island City, and is supported by a Queens Art Fund New Work Grant.

Neal is a co-host of Show&Tell, a new lecture series at the New York Irish Center in Queens.

Artist Statement:

I work from subjects drawn from my everyday life— people, places and things I encounter in my neighborhood,

on walks to my studio, or the props and materials I utilize to make art. I mingle the various subjects together

easily shifting between outside terrain and indoor domesticity. I am less interested in the narrative or quotidian

aspects behind the motifs I depict, and more interested in their formal, conceptual and psychological

underpinnings. A wide range of media and perceptual cues set a work in motion like sketches, photos,

memory and imagination. A constant throughout my work is the device of a roving grid that serves to organize

while simultaneously abstract representational subjects, and emphasizes the raw physicality of the creative

process itself.

The landscapes I depict are oriented around the four seasons, and elements of fire, water, earth and air. My

subjects are drawn from a variety of locales, including the horticulture and attractions of Gantry Park, Queens

and Bryant Park, Manhattan, as well as the woods of Lake George and Chatham, NY and the sidewalks and

construction sites of Long Island City, NY. My use of grids emphasizes multi-quadrant, cinematic formats that

reveal different times of day and diverse vantage points, while also accentuating the mark-making and

constitutive forms that bring to life motifs of urban and rural living. I draw on-site in charcoal and graphite which

serves as preliminary studies for larger paintings, and grids assist to scale-up and re-imagine a variety of

smaller compositions.

My still-life paintings employ tabletop setups that are observed at close range or from a hovering bird’s eye

view. I select objects based on their sensuality, texture and immediate visual appeal and I accentuate the

materiality of the objects when I paint them. My props are diaristic materials I happen upon like; found objects,

glass vases, plastic flowers, textiles and studio ephemera. I often use gridding devices to create a one-to-one

correspondence between actual objects and their two dimensional depiction, and to assist in locating props in

space. Ultimately, my still life paintings exist as reference points for musing on the creation of artworks themselves,

and are as abstract as they are representational.