Brendan Neiland was born in Lichfield in 1941. He first studied at Birmingham College (1961–1966) before moving to London to study at the Royal College of Art, where he was tutored by Sir Peter Blake and graduated in 1969.
Fascinated by the artistic possibilities of architecture as a subject, much like his main inspiration, Fernand Léger, who – after working in an architecture studio – used marked grid lines in his artistic depictions, Neiland rediscovered and represented the urban landscape as an artistic subject filled with poetry. Compositional grid lines appear in his work, skilfully harmonising the rippling and rhythmic reflections on glass with the rigid, steel structures. The inception of this architectonic corpus stems from a very simple observation: ‘So much of the city is observed through reflection,’ Neiland once said. As such, reflection plays a fundamental part in his practice, and could be described as his core thematic focus. Nevertheless, mirrored images being intangible, Neiland’s aesthetic pursuit allows him to approach a variety of urban objects and surfaces: one of his earliest series of paintings showed the reflections cast on car bonnets, subsequent paintings featured building reflections and more recently the artist has turned his attention to street signs and advertisements. As he travels and his context changes, so do the hues, warmth and overall atmospheres of the reflections he immortalises.
Neiland’s captivation with captured reflection is akin to the Romantic practice of representing water, its fluidity and, of course, reflection in landscape painting. Ultimately, Neiland’s corpus – which looks beyond the city to depict clouds scudding across the sky, light and shadow, in constant, ever-changing movement against the monumental stability of buildings – explore a form of sublime beauty that places him in the wake of the Romantic landscape painters of the 19th century. Technically, however, the artist is very much of his era: the brush was laid aside for the spray gun in the one hand and the scalpel in the other, and an entirely idiosyncratic process came into being of working with card and paper masks and stencils, cut and transferred to the most remarkable exactness.
At the beginning of his career, his artistic prowess was recognised with the following prizes: Daler Rowney Award, Royal Academy of Arts, London (1978); John Moores XI Prize Winner, Liverpool (1978); and Silver Medal, Royal College of Art, London (1969). In 1992 he was elected to the Royal Academy, but he lost his membership in 2004 after financial irregularities were uncovered in his managing of the Royal Academy Schools. Other commentators speculated that his expulsion was connected to an internal power struggle over the Academy’s governance. Fellow academician Sir Peter Blake resigned from the Academy in protest at Neiland’s expulsion. He was also elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and appointed Professor of Painting at the University of Brighton.
Selected solo international exhibitions include: Neiland in Singapore, Galerie Belvédère, Singapore (2015); Neiland at the Cut, The Cut, London (2012); Neiland’s Choice, John Bloxham Gallery, London (2008); Brendan Neiland – A Retrospective, Museum and Art Galleries, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates (2006); A Display of Prints and Working Materials, 1974–1995, Royal Academy of Arts, London (1995); and Brendan Neiland – Recent Paintings, Fischer Fine Art, London (1991).
