Liz Neild (1936 - 2016)
Liz Neild was born in Australia, where a wide and unoccupied landscape first formed her seeing and continued to influence her palette. Everything there is muted by ochres and greys, except for the intense blue sea and sky. In later years, the generous spaces of the English countryside gave her a second source. The English landscape is not empty but etched over with ancient tracks and earthworks, the traces of previous lives, and always enlivened by season and weather. She also included figure painting, which remained in her subject matter.
Her work lay between abstract and figurative, moving back and forth across the boundary. Sometimes a picture would begin as an abstract composition until something developed and directed itself towards a subject. Sometimes it began with a subject, and the work would take on a life of its own and move away from the starting point. In the words of Sickert: 'the singing of a song learned by heart, not a feat of sight reading.' Paint for its own sake, as thin as watercolour, as thick as butter, and everything in between; this was her real subject. It could be wiped on with a rag or scraped off with a card. Each brush left a different mark, and each surface received the paint in its own way. Oil paint gave Liz a sensuousness and a subtlety to both texture and colour that invited experiment.