Marcelyn McNeil creates both intimate- and large-scale oil abstractions that evolve primarily through pouring methods. Adopting a lyrical call-and-response attitude toward process, the artist uses multiple layers, stains, and bleeds of thinned pigment that fade into one another—suggesting a space that is both formed and unformed. McNeil’s quietly subversive work experiments with illusion, perspective and color to create a place for unmediated introspection.

BIO:

Marcelyn McNeil was born in Kansas in 1965. The artist received an MFA from the University of Illinois, Chicago.

Solo exhibitions of McNeil’s work have taken place at: Conduit Gallery in Dallas, Texas; Lawndale Art Center in Houston, Texas; Galveston Art Center in Galveston, Texas; Kathryn Markel in New York City; Robischon in Denver, Colorado; and Central Features in Albuquerque, New Mexico; among others.

Group exhibitions that have included McNeil’s work have taken place at: San Antonio Museum of Art in San Antonio, Texas; the Art Museum of South Texas in Corpus Christi, Texas; Denny Gallery in New York City; Wilding Cran Gallery in Los Angeles, California; McClain Gallery in Houston, Texas; and Joymore Gallery in Chicago, Illinois; among others.

McNeil is a fellow of McDowell Colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire. 

McNeil’s work is included in the permanent collections of the San Antonio Museum of Art in San Antonio, Texas.

A monograph of McNeil’s work, Marcelyn McNeil, Works, was published by Radius Books in Santa Fe, New Mexico in 2022. Included in the book are writings by Hesse McGraw, Executive Director at CAM Houston in Texas, and Alison Hearst, a curator at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth in Texas. 

McNeil lives and works in Dallas, Texas.