Artist Essay

Nature has long been the subject of Christine Neill's large mixed-media paintings. The immediate and illusive transparency of watercolor and the contemporary digital processes she uses appropriately express the unseen ephemeral states of nature.

Neill’s process entails bringing collected plant matter into her studio to separate them from a landscape context allowing her to examine the subjects in detail. She often layers the hands-on techniques of painting and drawing with archival ink jet prints of scanned natural material and digital photos. The resulting mixed-media pieces imbed painterly interpretation with objective representation, contrasting expressive and organic with analytical and formal.

The resulting images chronicle tenuous and vibrant growth as plant forms return to seeds, leaves turn to mulch, and pods split hinting of the dark mysteries deep within as Neill explores the intricacies of the natural world that parallel those of human life. She uses light and shadow, vivid and rotting color, and familiar and menacing shapes to compare tenuous natural activities similar to human events. This is a reminder that all individuals have a deep-rooted connection to the earth and that similar biological processes bind the natural and human worlds.