Artist's Statement When I arrived in the American Southwest in 2003, the land just made sense to me. From the arid, dusty flatlands of the Chihuahuan desert, to the equally hot and unforgiving vistas of the Sonoran Desert. In my mind a transference was going on. Provencal expressionism was being restated in the American Southwest. Here was the place to do the work. This was the land that would reflect the feeling – and usher in a new look by way of paintings that lived only in my imagination…at least up until that point. I felt that I was a person who carried all the lessons with me, creating a kind of hyper awareness of the land and the teachings gleaned from strolling the ancient streets of Van Gogh’s Arles, in France. Or moments like sitting in Van Gogh’s night Café, contemplating the profundity of that experience over a beer. And from gaining a treasured friend in my “maître” and mentor Jean-Claude Quilici. In 2003 all the lessons – from my early days with my mom’s oversized sketchbooks, to the jungles and seas of the South Pacific during my four years in New Zealand – all of them coalesced. I felt like travelers everywhere feel when, at the end of the long journey, the wheels of the airplane touch the ground – and you have well and truly arrived. My painting is, in its essence, a hybrid sensation made visible. It is a mental and synthetic fusion of what I see and feel – brought to life in an inexplicable middle ground. It can never quite be reality. And I have never fully embraced abstraction. However there are bits of abstraction in reality, and the mental fusion of the two, combined with the elements of shaped and sculpted paint and vibrant colors – these things make the essential elements of my work. In most cases I enjoy nature unaffected and untouched by humans. But I do find joy occasionally in structures that speak of human habitation in a more colorful or interesting manner. Or cities themselves that seem alive and flowing in the same way natural land can be. Arizona has been a particularly fruitful place to fill canvases with visions. Here I came face to face with Giant Saguaros – some nearly as old as our country itself, staring down across decades and centuries, presiding over the land like monoliths to our desert. I have never tired of painting Saguaros. I once said in an interview that “They seem to almost be anthropomorphic. Like plants with personality.” And just as no two people are alike, no two Saguaros are alike – leading to an infinity of small variations that make this “Giant of the Desert”, as I call it, constantly interesting. I have also long loved the beautiful state of California - it’s coasts, Redwood forests, and the Sierras in particular. I plan to do more paintings of those subjects in the coming years. When working on subjects from the Southwest, California, or Europe, I have tried to supply myself with a critical answer to a question that has never been far from my mind; the question of what paintings might be if I painted simply that fusion of what I saw and what I felt. If I took the spirit of Van Gogh and Quilici and created a hybrid containing all that I saw and felt – what would painting be? By way of an answer, I have offered the paintings themselves. And I am so deeply grateful that collectors, friends, magazines, and even book publishers have found my work to be unique – in the very way that I had wanted it to be. Max Mikesell, the former owner of the Max Gallery in Tucson, once told an art magazine editor “I have 40 or 50 artists in my gallery, and none of them are doing anything quite like what this guy is doing. And his name is Neil Myers. “ Taking the time to look at art is something that we should all do whenever we can. Because it will be up to us to see if true culture and lasting values in our arts will escape unscathed in the age of small screens and sound byte attention spans. To take a longer moment, to be alone with the beauty of our natural world is more critical now than ever before. Because in looking at art, we are giving ourselves permission to feel and be alive. It is a call for a long pause – the time we spend before a painting, or sculpture, or listening to a symphony or reading a good book. The permission to be human in the age of distraction and frighteningly short attention spans… Thank you all for being fellow travelers on this journey. You have taught me that what I see, others actually see – and therefore the journey will never, ever be a lonely one. Neil Myers The artist Neil Myers was born and raised in Elkin, North Carolina. As a young boy he learned to draw from his mother who drew in charcoal and painted in acrylic. He began to show and sell his first paintings in his teens, eventually earning a one man show at a local art gallery. Neil attended college at Lenoir-Rhyne University, graduating with a bachelors in French with a minor in English. Neil is a completely self-taught artist. Neil's life and travels led him to study abroad in France in 1996, as well as living in New Zealand between 1999 until 2003. Neil then relocated back to the United States, living for a half year in New Mexico before finally settling and making his permanent studio in Tucson, Arizona. Neil's works have been featured in Southwest Art Magazine (three times), Phoenix Home and Garden Magazine, Tucson Home Magazine, Oro Valley Magazine, and most recently he was a main arts feature in the Arizona Daily Star newspaper. Neil's work has been influenced by a variety of artists, but mostly by his friend the French Artist Jean-Claude Quilici, as well as Vincent Van Gogh. Neil has often described his works as "hanging on a line between Quilici and Van Gogh."