From his remote studio near the coast of Northumberland, Neil Nelson produces large, brooding landscape and seascape paintings. Moving between realism and abstraction, they offer a glimpse of a powerful and timeless prospect; vast panoramic expanses, dark chasms, distant pools of light, icy wastelands, raging seas and brewing storms - Neil depicts a world forged by time and the elemental forces of nature.
The paintings display a raw and instinctive approach, in some ways as untamed and energetic as the natural world they portray. Formed by gouging, scraping, slicing, erasing and rebuilding, they are a vehicle through which Neil explores not only the physical characteristics of the land and sea, but the abundant and tactile properties of oil paint.
He adds various other materials into the paint – marble dust to add body and thicken the paint, as well as beeswax and sand mixed amongst other things. “It all goes towards creating the texture I’m looking for. I quite like the idea of having actual materials from the earth going into my landscape paintings.”
Born in 1977 in Berwick upon Tweed, Neil enrolled in art college to study fine art at the earliest opportunity. On the strength of an exhibition in New York he was accepted into Studio Escalier, a classical art school in the South of France and on his return to England he began a successful career as an artist. He has exhibited in galleries from London to Australia, and has undertaken many commissions for private collectors. He has also been featured widely in publications including the Daily Mail Weekend magazine and the New York Arts magazine, and has talked about his work at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery.
