Neil Kathol Visual Art

I am a multi-disciplinary artist. I make paintings of many kinds, objects/assemblages, photos and videos.

The variety of painting types happen in my studio. But in parallel I paint “en plein air”. I’ve done this for over 30 years. I make these small paintings in an observational (mimetic/imitative) style; or, I may depart from that by using my own colours and figuration, and by letting the brushstrokes communicate.

I also paint larger format paintings from photos informed by environmental concerns.

I also make abstract paintings that have a broad range of marks and colours. They are made using various mark-making techniques. In these I am mindful of my view visual art is a unique place for meaning derived without referents to the understood.

I also make pictures where I both paint areas or marks, and affix objects to wooden panels (and paint on them, too). These are often done outdoors, letting my intuition be informed by the environment which is most often where I collected the object(s) and/or the support, from.

My photography and video practice consists of recordings of situations or environments where I will have added/subtracted something or caused something to happen or change.

I was a sculpture major in art school, and I have always collected things mainly “junk”. Generally I assemble object-based works with these found materials. My “rule of two” is a starting point – limiting them to two objects. Or, start from a first-sight impulse. A goal can be indecipherability notwithstanding the work consists of recognizable things.

I want the viewer to be “face to face with reality itself”- a notion of sculptors like Richard Tuttle (American b. 1941); or, I try to cause parts of them to deny what they actually are.