Figurative drawing is at the heart of Winifred McNeill's work but the ground on which it appears and the company it keeps is often as expressive as the graphic images themselves. Nudes, putti, members of the animal kingdom, though intimate in scale, are drawn, and occasionally sculpted, with an emphasis on heft and action. They crop up on paper, in glazed tile, on the surface of plaster. Relief sculptures, done on great rectangular slabs of plaster, confront the graphic with the reality of the found object.
Installation, Ten paintings and fifty sculptures
Architecture, both painted and actual, sets the stage for the fleeting drama of small birds and insects in flight.
A Perfect Day (1–10): Ten paintings of a trompe l-oeil wall niche trace the progress of the sun across the form. Small indistinct creatures appear and dissolve into the space.
In Flight (1–50): Figures loosely sketched in the paintings materialize here as small plaster sculptures of birds in flight swarming in and around a marble fireplace.
International Artist Exchange
In the fall of 2009, as one of eight American artists, I was selected to participate in a meeting with Chinese artists in Suzhou, China, and explore the ancient gardens in that area. The series Picturesque came out of that experience and was exhibited in the culminating show.
Commissioned to conceal the hollow that had once housed a fireplace, I devised a plaster insert loosely divided into squares to echo the extensive panelling of the room. Putti, drawn in graphite, crawl, tussle, hide and play within the compartments or cross the boundary between them.
Letterpress Book
The Helen Fragments, a translation of books three and six of Homer's Iliad by Richared Seibert, was produced as a limited edition letter press book by publisher Peter Koch. Fifty illustrations printed from my ink drawings accompany each verse. The protagonists, drawn in the nude save for helmets and one surprising pair of high heels, act out their destiny on a narrow stage formed by classical friezes.