Liz Neild was born in Australia whose wide, unoccupied landscape first formed her seeing and still influences her palette. Everything there is muted by ochres and grey except for the intense blue sea and sky. In recent years the generous spaces of the English countryside have given her a second source. The English landscape is not empty but etched over with ancient tracks and earthworks, the traces of previous lives, and always enlivened by season and weather. She also includes figure painting and still lives in her subject matter.

Her work lies between abstract and figurative moving back and forth across the boundary. Sometimes a picture begins as an abstract composition until something wells up and directs it towards a subject. Sometimes it begins with a subject and then the work takes on a life of its own and moves away from the starting point. Truth to expression and to the material is more important than objective truth which is merely reporting. In the words of Sickert “the singing of a song learned by heart, not a feat of sight reading”. Paint for its own sake, as thin as watercolour, as thick as butter, and everything in between; this is her real subject. It can be wiped on with a rag or scraped off with card. Each brush leaves a different mark and each surface receives the paint in its own way. Oil paint gives a sensuousness and a subtlety to both texture and colour that invite experiment.