Through the window of his Brooklyn studio – this one in Pretoria, not New York – Neil watches the peculiar light of South Africa fall across his canvases. The gift came to him early, as such things often do, though he never sought the formal training that might have contained or constrained it.
There is something almost medieval in his devotion to apprenticeship – not his own, for he had none, but in the steady stream of students who come to learn what cannot truly be taught. They gather in his workshop as if around a guild master, though he would laugh at such a comparison.
His hands move between mediums with the casual confidence of long practice: now oils, now acrylics, now the more unforgiving watercolors. The subjects shift too, restless as mercury. Landscapes dominate, as perhaps they must in a country where the land itself seems to demand witness, but there are also the still lifes, the wildlife studies, the human faces caught in paint.
The gallery in Brooklyn (Pretoria) serves as both showcase and sanctuary, while the outpost in Clarens catches the eye of passing travelers. He takes commissions, yes, but there is nothing servile in the way he approaches them. Rather, he listens with the careful attention of a portraitist, finding the space where his patron’s vision might meet his own. The light changes. He adjusts his palette accordingly. There is always more work to be done.