Artist Statement
A native Missourian, long-time Nashville, TN resident Bill Neill came to painting in his adult life, his passion sparked by a simple gift of watercolor paints and brushes. He experimented with a variety of methods before embracing a large minimalist format, a move inspired by a visit to the Rothko Room at the Phillips Museum in Washington D.C.
He works with large planes of color, pure shape and texture to communicate a mood, a sense of place or a kind of movement.
Primarily self-trained, Bill works in mixed media. He prefers unstretched raw canvas, and uses overlays of gauze cloth and a variety of pigments -- mainly acrylics and oils, sometimes oilsticks and common housepaints -- to create his visual expressions.
"The process itself is exciting; I can get lost in it. The works serve as portals for me -- and the viewer -- to explore inner worlds."