Neil Tye
Gallery
Paintings that entices the viewer to be immersed in the colours, shapes, and movement of the paintings, where hidden images, feelings, or meanings can be revealed.
Artist statement
I paint intuitively, sometimes I have an idea of a colour or shape, and use that as my starting point, starting my process by making marks on the canvas, and allow the flow and freedom to take me where it is showing me to paint. At other times I use classical paintings, pictures I take of nature or objects as a reference, pulling upon the drama, movement, textures, and colours as my inspiration.
My inspiration also comes from my years as a movement theatre teacher and performer, pulling upon my devising techniques, my different experiences of travel, experiencing and being inspired by the different cultures around the world, as well as my home town urban up bringing in North London from graffiti on the walls, to my musical urban punk and rock background too.
About Neil Tye
“The real reason for doing art is to bring human values back to the conversation”
This quote impacted me, and is in fact the reason why I do art, and why it drives me, through my art and creative expression my longing is to get the best out of people, to see the best in people, to encourage them to dare to dream, and believe in themselves, and ultimately to create conversation.
Neil has been active as an artist all his life, from music, to performance, to painting. For the last 25 years he has been working professionally, as a physical visual theatre performer, instructor, teacher, and installation artist, and has taken his performances, and teaching skills around the world, both in theatres, to community centres, to the dumps in Manila, the Bush in Africa, and the Amazon Jungle in Brazil. 12 years ago he took up the brush, and found his passion for fine art again, and hasn’t put the brush down since, and has exhibited his works in various places around Denmark and the UK within those years.
Born in London UK in 1963, where upon He moved with my parents to a small town in Harlow Essex, to where he is currently living with his wife and children in Kolding Denmark.
He studied commercial art at the Herts and Essex school of art and design. From there he graduated and spent some years working his way through various commercial design studios within London.
In his spare time he took up another artistic passion of his, playing percussion in several rock bands travelling around the country, and sometimes playing abroad. His experience with the music gave him a whole new perspective on life and culture. At the same time he was introduced to another hidden talent that he never knew he had, and that was contemporary dance!
He was introduced to a contemporary dance school in Camden Town London called the Hilde Holge school of Central European Expressionism, and went onto devote his time to this new found artistic expression.
From the dance this catapulted him into a whole new world of expression and he went on to study mime and physical theatre under a master called Desmond Jones who ran his own school in Shepards Bush London. From there he went on to perform with various companies, and one in particular that inspired him most was called Tera Nova in Copenhagen Denmark. There he worked at a research laboratory for contemporary theatre and art, collaborating with fine arts practitioners, scenographers, and theatre practitioners, all trying to break boundaries, crossing between fine art, creative writing, to installation and theatre.
Today his practice as a painter is heavily intertwined, inspired, and influenced by his faith, his training in the arts, travels, dreams, and prayers. From the raw expression, and voice of punk rock, and graffiti that was sprawled over the walls of the sub- urban environment that he grew up in, to the freedom of expression through movement, improvisation and theatre devising techniques, to his adventures around the world are all evident in his paintings today, from the pushing and pulling of the layers of colour and movement of the brush strokes on the canvas, to the boldness and grand sizes and colours that he uses, allowing the viewer to be absorbed by the grandiosity of the shapes and colours on the canvas, all building up to a crescendo of colourful expression, sometimes swapping from the abstract, to a more abstract figurative expression, each painting telling its own story.
