Annabel Neall: Figures In Abstraction

For its last changing exhibition of 2010, and as a further effort to support and feature local art in a variety of media and styles, Taylor-Jensen fine Arts displays the work of innovative Palmerston North abstract painter, Annabel Neall. Comprising 14 acrylic works on canvas and 10 smaller acrylic works on board, Figures in Abstraction centres on the human form in a variety of settings. Annabel’s paintings are ‘a comfortable mix of abstraction that allows figures to be included.’ Although the works are basically acrylic many are ‘mixed media’ in conjunction with acrylic paint to achieve the effect that the artist wishes to convey in her work.

Annabel Neall has exhibited previously at Taylor-Jensen Fine Arts showing Hawke’s Bay and Australian landscapes, interpretive work based on photographs of pet shop fish tanks, a variety of abstracts featuring flora from her garden and a previous exhibition on a similar vein entitled People and Places. Annabel has also shared gallery space at Taylor-Jensen Fine arts with both Vonnie Sterritt and the late Rita Easther. Figures in Abstraction continues the theme of including the human form in her abstract work. She states: “For me it is an exciting challenge. I am also intrigued by the sparseness and colours of dry landscapes and the opportunity to place figures in them. These can also be abstractions in themselves.” The exhibition is grouped into themes that reflect different environments and the human element within each.

Annabel Neall has painted and sketched all her life, and with a few interruptions for nursing career, marriage and family, this has been ongoing. She grew up drawing everything in sight; no person or thing on the family farm escaped her keen powers of observation. She used the watercolours of an old paint box to capture the dramatic landscapes of the Central Hawke’s Bay. She is still fascinated by the shades of autumn and summer in the hills of that region.

Annabel’s nursing career and family commitments did not give her much time for art, although she says that a lot of her subject matter comes from people and places that she knew in those days. Her nursing training gave her the opportunity to study people and from that has come her interest in noting body language and the way figures move. She is interested in the patterns found in landscapes, including light and shadow, and the figures that live and move in those landscapes. Her paintings provide a glimpse of pattern or grouping that is a satisfying combination of colours and shapes.

Neall is an exhibiting member of the New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts and currently shows in a number of galleries throughout the North Island. Her first solo exhibition was held in 1995; in 1998 she shared exhibition space with artist friend Vonnie Sterritt, in a critically successful show at Taylor-Jensen Fine Arts. In addition to her exhibitions in Palmerston North, Annabel has exhibited at galleries in Hawke’s Bay, Wellington and Auckland. Her work can be seen in public and private collections within New Zealand and overseas.

Event listed by Stuart Schwartz

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