Alan McNiel

Interest in art has always been a key aspect of my life. In college I realized this was a career for which I’d have great enthusiasm, and graduated with degrees in Fine Art from Colorado State University (BFA /1978) and the University of Montana (MA/1987).

I enjoy a wide variety of creative styles, but find my own work most influenced by modern artists such as Andy Warhol and Robert Rauschenberg.

My most recent paintings involve contemporary urban landscape, and combine oil and encaustic paint with photography. I begin by taking digital photographs, which I print in black & white. These are attached to portions of a canvas, and the entire surface is painted with combinations of oil, alkyd, and encaustic.

In working with this series I’ve become especially interested in advertising and popular culture, and how those elements shape our visual environment. These paintings reflect my perception of our world today – how it feels and might be remembered, more than how it actually appears in a photographic sense. Although some viewpoints are reasonably correct as far as architecture is concerned, I hope the long-term effect will be as a record of what these places felt like at this unique point in time.

My studio overlooks the Yaak River, in the Purcell mountains of Northwest Montana. I paint full-time during the winter months, and travel to about a dozen fine art festivals during the summer and fall. I also work with galleries, museums, percent-for-art programs, and Artists-in-Schools residencies (funded by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Montana Arts Council) which provide opportunities for students to work with professional artists on short-term creative projects.