Shipyard Marina: watercolors by Patrick Neill

April 8, 2023 – May 14, 2023.

“Shipyard Marina: watercolors by Patrick Neill,” opens in our Upper Gallery on Saturday, April 8 with a reception from 2-5pm.  Patrick joined Museum Director Bob Foster for an online Artist Talk Thursday, April 6 at 7pm. It was livestreamed on YouTube here and Facebook here. The exhibit runs until Sunday, May 14.

We’re overjoyed to welcome Patrick and his beautiful, deep watercolors to our Upper Gallery. Patrick was born in 1943! He began art lessons at a young age, so he has about 70 (!) years experience seeing, drawing and painting. It’s rare for the Museum to present the work of an artist with such a history creating, who has been exhibiting decades. Professionally, he worked for 18 years as a union carpenter and two years as the foreman of the carpenter shop at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. He’s built mock-ups for industrial designers at Henry Dreyfuss Associates and served four years in the US Air Force.  After a lifetime of working, and also creating art, he has found his sure footing as a painter in retirement. He says, “One cannot be a painter part time.” To see more of his work on Instagram, just click here. Welcome, Patrick! Patrick told us about his whole life’s journey so far, and we’re so pleased to share it below. What a life! Have a read. 

I was born on May 29, 1943 in Baltimore, Maryland, and raised in McPherson and Emporia in Kansas. I took art lessons from Mrs. Pool, a retired teacher, whom I had met at a local craft fair when I was 11 or 12. I got a boy scout art merit badge with work that I had done at Mrs. Pool’s. The merit badge counselor, Norman Eppink, was the chairman of the art department at the local college. He suggested that I draw with a large stick of charcoal like the charred end of a stick.

My family and I went to the Nelson Art Gallery in Kansas City to view the showing of the Chrysler Collection. I was impressed by a large van Dyck and a drawing by Juan Gris. Nell Blaine told me that she had been impressed also by the Chrysler Collection when she was a girl.

While in high school I worked at the local stock yards in the summer hauling hay: loading and unloading 4 truckloads of 4 – 5 tons each with a partner. I started drawing in connection with zoology lab in college after a four-year hiatus. My academic performance was lacking. After a year back home, I moved to Portland, OR. I enrolled in painting and watercolor classes at Portland State College. The watercolor class was disappointing. I visited the art museum in Portland. I worked at the Albina Freight Yards as a class 2 loader. Occasionally I was assigned to unload barges of 50# sacks of lime and 100# bags of starch for the paper mills. I enlisted in the Air Force. I was stationed at Williams AFB, AR, for the next 3 years and 9 months. I enrolled in night classes in painting and life drawing at Arizona State University, which was near Willams AF base. I took several semesters of life drawing at ASU. Eugene Grigsby was the teacher in life drawing and Mr. Wagner in painting.

I moved back to Emporia, Kansas after my discharge from the Air Force. I enrolled in Emporia State College. Life drawing was added to the curriculum at my instigation.  My senior year, I persuaded Norman Eppink to supervise me in a seminar. He encouraged me to do tight drawings with charcoal pencils, ala Richard Estes. I graduated with a double major, in Art and English. I worked for Didde-Glaser, a graphic arts manufacturer, while in college, full-time in summers and 20hrs/week during the school year. My designation was that of stock clerk but I drove a truck and fork lift mostly.

While I was in the Air Force, I read an essay by Phillip Guston in the Art News, which had been a lecture at the New York Studio School of Drawing Painting and Sculpture. After I graduated I applied to the Studio School and I took a bus to New York for the interview and was accepted. The emphasis of the school was studio work exclusively. The first semester I did life drawing in the morning and painting in the afternoon. I exchanged life drawing for sculpture in the second semester. I was granted a full Scholarship. As part of the work for the scholarship, I rebuilt the iron steps in the small court yard of the town house.

The school rented a bus and students and some faculty went to the Barnes Foundation in Merion, PA. I didn’t realize that it was such a privilege. I must have thought the museum was just always in waiting for students to spend a day leisurely wandering through the various rooms viewing the paintings. My opinions regarding the relationship between different artists and periods of painting were confirmed. My interactions with Leland Bell, George Spaventa and Esteban Vicente were particularly important to me. Mercedes, the dean, knew many people in the art world and attracted speakers such Buckminster Fuller, Phillip Guston and Meyer Shapiro for the lectures and informal talks with Willem De Kooning and George McNeil for instance.

During my time at the Studio School I helped Leland Bell prepare for his upcoming spring show by making canvas stretchers for him. He showed me a stretcher that he’d bought in France. The superintendent, Mr. Bohn, at St. Francis Xavier on West 16th St., where I was a night watchman, permitted me to use the shop there to make French-like stretchers for Leland Bell’s show.

I didn’t return to the studio school after one year believing that I had to go my own way. Leland Bell with whom I maintained a relationship for several years after the studio school, encouraged me to go to the Kansas City Art Institute where he occasionally taught. Had I done so my prospects as an artist may have been enhanced with an MFA. Myself and two other Studio School students renovated a club in East Hampton, NY, for Mercedes Matter’s son. With money from that job I bought machines to start making French-style stretchers. Through Leland Bell I met other artists: Robert DeNiro, Sr, Paul Resika, Nell Blaine, Warren Brandt and Ilya Bolotowsky whom I supplied with stretchers for several years. I made stretchers for painting restorers/conservators also, principally the Paul Moro studio. Many masterpieces of painting have been mounted on stretchers that I made.

In 1980, I returned to New York City after a year working in Kansas. I worked at Julius Lowy and Shar-Sisto Inc., experts in period framing, making stretchers for a year. Afterwards I built mock ups for Henry Dreyfus Assoc., an industrial design company, for a couple of years. I was foreman of the carpenter shop at the Metropolitan Museum of Art for two years. After the Met job, I was a union carpenter until I retired in 2003.

While at the Met I began going regularly to the Project of Living Artists on Green Street for the life drawing sessions and continued going there and occasionally to the Spring Street Studio and Art Students League; wherever I could draw from models. I stopped going a few years ago. While I worked at the Met I also began to make regular use of sketchbooks which I continue to do. With life drawing and sketchbooks, I had hoped to keep my hand in as an artist until I retired.

While this may have been helpful to me as an artist when I retired, I learned that it would be another 10 years before my work showed consistent quality in painting. This shift can be observed in my sketchbooks. My sketchbook entries show significant improvement beginning in 2013.

One cannot be a painter part time.

The exhibit is supported by a block grant from the State/County Partnership program for the Arts, administered by the Hudson County Division of Cultural and Heritage Affairs.