About

  "To the best of my ability I try to paint what I see and understand about the subject. For me, painting is a journey towards understanding - a quest for knowledge and an ongoing struggle to understand nature and to decipher the effects of light on the world around. I try to paint as honestly as I can and bring out some element of truth and beauty of the subject.
  Although initially I aim towards realism in my work, the painting quickly takes form on a much deeper level, and as the subject reveals itself, begins to provoke a more primal, emotional response. I want to elicit some kind of reaction or sympathy for an object which appears to be striving to communicate. I am trying to show something which I feel is mysterious or hidden about the object - something majestic.

  There is an aspect of the light which exists between two extremes. Between the light and the darkness is an area of twilight - the dusk of the light. Not shadow or halftone, but a darker light. It is a falling away of the light into a more subtle state. This is where I want my paintings to exist."

  Neil Nelson was born in 1977 in Berwick-upon-Tweed, Northumberland where he now lives and works. He studied fine art at Northumberland College of Art and Design, and Classical Realism at Studio Escalier in Southern France, where he trained with artists Timothy Stotz, N.Michelle Tully and Ted Seth Jacobs.
 
  Neil's work ranges from still life and portrait to figurative drawings and paintings. He is quickly gaining a strong reputation as a still life painter for his often small, earthy paintings of solitary fruit, bottles and jars.
Responding to the effects of the changing light within the surrounding landscape, his organic and vibrant compositions convey an often intense sense of light and depth.

  Neil's work has been exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery in London as part of the BP Portrait Award, the Scottish National Gallery in Edinburgh - where in 2008 he also gave a talk about his work - and London's Mall Galleries with the Royal Society of Portrait Painters. He has had solo exhibitions and group exhibitions in Newcastle, Edinburgh, London and New York, and his work is featured in collections in the UK, Europe and the U.S.