The Art of Mary Neville

from Ojai Magazine. Summer 2022

by Ojai Magazine

Eating for the Season

Painting in Real Time

Mary Neville

by PAMELA ZERO

photo: Lauren Whitney Glass

Some artists paint to teach, others to point out missed moments in the world. Mary Neville paints to connect, both with others and herself. Her work is triggered by how she feels and whatever is happening in the world around and within her. The result is a powerful body of work that is beautiful as well as accessible.

Her career was mostly in design and marketing until she started painting 10 years ago. “I came to painting rather late,” said the self-taught artist. “In the beginning it was just kind of figuring out how to paint, what materials I liked, and slowly, over time, I’ve realized that I bring a lot of my internal dialogue out. Painting is a huge way for me to have a conversation about the world, about issues, maybe global but also personal.” Neville was lured into painting by the prospect of creating for herself rather than for someone else’s agenda. “I was always interested in composition, how to order things,” she said. “Every career I’ve had throughout my life has gone back to this idea: to find the beautiful, the order, of the different parts.” Asked to volunteer for her daughter’s art class, she shepherded a project and created a piece with the students that showed hints of her now signature style. She learned of Amy Schneider’s mixed media class in Ventura and started honing the craft of painting. When Neville moved to Ojai, finding a house with a room for a studio was a priority. She settled in, did the Art Detour for a few years, and in 2017 was invited into the Ojai Studio Artists. With her work hung in downtown eateries, people around town started to take notice. “I became the girl with the paintings in the restaurants,” she said with a laugh. Disarmingly open, Neville has a sunny smile and is willing to discuss everything from being adopted to slowing down during the pandemic. “My adopted family was very nice, but I was always an outsider,” she said. “We tend to fear abandonment. You kind of come into this world trying to live up to the expectations of others; otherwise you’re going to get booted.” Like her paintings, what you see on the surface with Neville is both accurate and illusory. Sitting out by the pool at her house, with dogs wandering up now and again for pats, birds chirping, and the distant sound of the tower bells, it’s easy to forget about the often painstaking work of creating. “Sometimes I take a leap o a photograph, compositionally,” she said, “but mostly it’s just me starting out and trusting that whatever shape or color, line or mark finds its way there is because that’s where it needs to be at that time. If it gets covered later, that’s okay. I have one piece that showed up as one thing, I showed it, it came back to the studio, became something else, and then was finally done. It took seven years.” Neville’s art inhabits her house. A large piece in a bedroom awaits its next step and the living room is scattered with canvases. An early painting hovers on a wall in a side room, with blocks of blue and green. It’s more representative than her more recent work, but just as inviting. “When I started painting, I painted very pale, watercolor-y, pleasing paintings,” she said. “I was very interested in layering, and then as you got closer you started seeing what was underneath the layers. It was very blue and pretty.” Then the Thomas fi re happened in 2017.

“For at least a year afterwards I couldn’t paint with color,” Neville said. “Every time I went in my studio it was gray, white, black. It was all very much subdued. I realized then that I am painting in real time, emotionally processing experiences that I am going through. Eventually the color came back, but some of the black stayed.” A painting titled “Oracle,” leaning against the wall in the living room, is an expanse of black that both looms and recedes. Painted after a dream of soaring through the air as a crow, the piece is part of her aerial view series. Blocks of deep yellow and textured white provide stability, and delicate shapes fl oat through. “There’s something about soaring, trying to untether myself from a style,” Neville said. “I’m always wanting to explore my boundaries and push something further.”

Her studio is a cozy room o a patio, filled with light. The floor is spattered with layers of paint and every fl at surface is covered with the tools Neville uses for her work: palette knives, a bin of torn paper, and kitchen implements —whatever her work requires. Paintings, whether stacked on easels, or hung or leaning against walls, pulse in the room with a steady presence, some featuring simple ideas tossed on the canvas, others subtly detailed. Neville navigates her way through the large pieces with ease, pulling one out of the way to point out another. Neville’s creative process is mirrored in her studio, with overlapping layers of work hiding and revealing themselves. “I’m conscious about how I show up in multiple ways in my paintings,” she said. “I tend to paint in a series, and I fl ip-fl op a bit. Sometimes I’m feeling more painterly, so you’ll see more brushstrokes. Other times I’ll sand the canvas a bit or add materials to it. It’s all about what the canvas wants to do.”

Neville’s paintings are vibrant records of the world around and within her. They bear witness to the real-time events that have affected her as she’s lived and worked, tucked away in her studio in the Arbolada. Wars, fi res, her childhood — all of it is fair game as she puts her experiences on canvas.

“I’m always delving into the inner parts of myself and letting go of what I can that’s not serving me, and becoming better aware of where I want to go, who I want to be, and how I want to show up in the world,” she said. “And painting is a big part of that.” Her next exhibit, a joint show with Shannon Celia titled 71%: Honoring Vital Waters, opens at the Channel Islands Maritime Museum in Oxnard on May 10. The pieces for the Maritime Museum are nuanced with water, round shapes, and sub-surface images, bringing visual depth to the show’s concept. As part of the Ojai Studio Artists, Neville participates in some of the organization’s Ojai events, as well as the Second Saturday mini-tours that focus on the Arbolada. A visit during the tours offers an up-close view of paintings on her patio and in her cleared-out workroom.

Like Ojai itself, getting into Neville’s work is fairly simple. It’s beautiful, honest, and engaging. And, like Ojai, one leaves a bit changed for the better. Visit: www.marynevilleart.com

Left: Marine Layer. 2022. Paint on canvas Top left: Heat Wave. 2021. Mixed Media Top right: Worlds Apart. 2021. Mixed media Bottom left: Moulin Rouge. 2020. Paint on canvas Bottom right: Raincheck. 2020. Paint on canvas