Page 2 - Charles Neal -web biography_Handy

Charles Neal : Born 1951 in Surrey, England.

Neal’s early painting period was initially influenced through frequent visits in his teenage years to the Amsterdam Rijksmuseum,
Stedelijk and Van Gogh museums.

His long established Amsterdam family provided the annual opportunity to visit the museums, and to relate directly with the city and
outlying countryside which was depicted in many of the 17th Century Dutch School of Painting. The chance to compare the period artwork
with Amsterdam during the 1960’s, which was still very much unchanged, gave Neal the experience of seeing at first hand the use of light
modelling to define spatial and emotional qualities within a composition.

Further influences at that time, were the discovery of the works of Vincent Van Gogh and John Constable. With both artists, their painting
language and choice of subject matter embodied the fundamental building blocks for Neal’s approach to painting.
In the case of John Constable, the handling of light and especially the relationship between sky and land seemed to be an extension of
compositional ideas from the Dutch school , but transposed to the English landscape. Additionally, it was Constable’s continual reference to
nature, not only as a source of inspiration, but through his outdoor sketches nature became his teacher. Importantly, Constable wanted to
depict the sublime in nature, this approach was in sympathy with the Romantic Movement .

Neal feels that landscape subjects act as a symbolism of the relationship between society, the individual and nature.
On the other hand, the work of Vincent Van Gogh may appear as a stark contrast, yet his work had a considerable degree of commonality
with Constable.

Van Gogh’s painting was born out of the Dutch tradition, his gradual metamorphosis into an early expressionist painter through
Impressionism, pointed the way for the use of colour and dynamic paint handling as a means of developing a visual language in a
composition, in such a way that took painting beyond pure recall.
In the 1980’s Neal began to paint professionally, working in association with Omell Galleries London and later joined Campbell’s of
London and Astley House Fine Art. It was during this period that he became interested in the French Impressionists, in particular Claude
Monet, Alfred Sisley and Camille Pissarro, for their lightness of touch, sense of celebration of nature and the daily round of life in
general. Further, the ‘en plein air’ approach to painting was a logical move forward and at the same time had reference to Constable’s
outdoor sketches.