Recent work at the southern Vermont art Center,
November 20, 2010-January 2, 2011

Christine Neill's watercolor and mixed media paintings reflect a distinctive investigation and celebration of the natural world. In rich, earthy tones, Neill carefully balances contrasts between warm and cool, natural and artificial, the physical and the spiritual. In her direct close ups of seeds, leaves, buds and other natural forms, collected and taken out of a landscape context, the artist focuses on the formal qualities of each unique entity and creates a palpable energy force. Recent studies including curious and deliberate pairings and arrangement of rocks, bunches of plants, and seed pods, reinforce the objects’ capacity for allegory, as well as the duality of Neill's concepts in explicit terms. Neill's ever-evolving lexicons of natural forms exist as physical archetypes, subtly questioning their own disparity while uniting the natural and the spiritual worlds. Neill's selections of organic matter pulsate with a metaphorical sensibility, reflecting the human quest for an essential, primordial type of existence that cannot be understood in words, but can be glimpsed and absorbed over time.

- Cara Ober, Artist and Critic