The oil paintings of Marcelyn McNeil weave through dualities the artist handles with virtuosity: organic and hard-edge, painterly and flat matte, austerity and humor. The tension created by these balances and the looming forms read simply but enable the chance to engage slowly within the macro-view of the composition and the micro-view of the palimpsest layers. Spare and deliberate forms interfold with soft pours to invite contemplation. White oxide takes on a dominant role in the palette and there is a deep push toward thinning and pouring oil paint. Each thin layer on the raw canvas becoming a luminous veil to deeply sensuous effect.

Recent small canvas works are both painted and sewn with the thread line becoming an elegant structural element where masked paint lines and vivid pops of color interplay. The use of various fabrics: rayon, burlap and linen, combine to enhance the textural variations within the architecture of each picture plane.

Marcelyn McNeil holds a BFA from Pacific Northwest College of Art (Portland, OR) and an MFA from University of Illinois at Chicago. Her work has been shown widely across the United States—including New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Houston, and Dallas—in commercial, nonprofit, university, and museum spaces. Within Texas, McNeil has exhibited at the San Antonio Museum of Art, The Art Museum of South Texas (Corpus), Galveston Arts Center, Lawndale Art Center (Houston), Conduit Gallery (Dallas), and others. From 2012 to 2014, McNeil taught painting at the University of Houston as visiting artist faculty. She has participated in residencies at the Vermont Studio Center, 100 W Corsicana, and MacDowell Colony, and she has been a Joan Mitchell Foundation grant nominee. Additional awards include the Milton and Sally Avery Fellowship, Individual Artist Support (Lawndale Art Center), Zeta Orionis Fellowship, Purchase Award (Portland Art Museum), and Community Arts Assistance Program Grant (the City of Chicago). McNeil's work is included in the permanent collections of the Dallas Museum of Art (Dallas, TX) and the San Antonio Museum of Art, (San Antonio, TX). A monograph, Marcelyn McNeil Works, was published by Radius Books in Santa Fe, New Mexico in 2022. Included in the book are writings by Hesse McGraw, Executive Director at CAM Houston in Texas, and Alison Hearst, a curator at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth in Texas. McNeil currently lives and works in Dallas, Texas.

https://marcelynmcneil.com/

Conduit Gallery Exhibitions

• Lime in de Coconut
• Briefly Gorgeous
• Hot Damn
• Slow Eddy
• Per Diem
• Love & Theft
• Longitude/Latitude Part II
• reshuffle
• Recent Paintings