Neilcarroll's Biography

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Neil Carroll's paintings are vibrant celebrations of his homeground, this place is his touchstone. Like many of the best landscape paintings, these are pictures not so much concerned with capturing a view as with declaring love. The vivid summer of childhood is captured powerfully in many images; cerulean blue skies and bright sun bouncing from the roofs of hillside houses. Other pictures have a sub-fuse,twilit mood and ghostly figures sometimes appear like memories,half present and half not. Carroll's intimate concern for one territory follows in a landscape tradition of Constable, Bonnard,Hopper and Wyeth, all of whom found potential in the micro-study of the everyday location. His vivid colour is influenced by Cezanne and Matisse and his handling of paint is lovely,wide washes of colour broken with abstract patterns and bold decisive marks that recall Howard Hodgkin. Neil Carroll was born in 1958 at Rhymney, Monmouthshire, South Wales. He trained at Newport School of Art where he studied under Ernest Zobole and John Selway among others, and The University of Wales in Cardiff. His major solo exhibition The Spirit Fired was held at Newport Museum and Art Gallery in 2004. BBC Arts and Media correspondent Jon Gower devoted a half hour programme 'First Hand' to Carroll's work and he has also been included in David Buckman's Dictionary of British Artists since 1945. Neil Carroll's current touring exhibition entitled HERE COMES THE SUN represents Wales at the International Festival InterCeltique at Lorient,Brittany in August 2010.
Dr. Peter Wakelin

Neilcarroll - Monmouthshire,