User:Siberianwarcat/sandbox

Brett Neal, a British national, was born in Tawau, Malaysia in 1962. He received the first art prize from “Towner art gallery” Eastbourne while he studied picture restoration and the science of painting and the classical materials under Antonio di Medido. Brett was also introduced to traditional handmade picture framing, sculpting in wood, and guilding. In 1983, Brett won a first prize and one man show at the Union Gallery in San Francisco. Later, he decided to move back to London to work with David Hockney also spending much with Francis Bacon and Gilbert and George. In 1985, he was patronized by Sir John Pritchard and managed by Basil Horsfield (manager of Kiri Te Kanawa). In the same year, he had a solo show at the “Martinez Hotel”, France during the Cannes Film Festival. He was commissioned to create portraits of Kiri Te Kanawa and Lord Edward Montague of Beaulieu in London. From 1986 to 1988, Brett moved around Europe and America. He studied marble sculpture in Italy and etching in Paris. He only worked on portrait commission pieces while working as a designer at Monte-Carlo Opera. In 1989, he worked on “To Anyone who Cares”, a series of 24 large canvases on the lives of street children in London. The work was shown at the “Hampshire Gallery”, London. Brett became a head teacher at the VAAS Foundation, former studio of Jean Dubuffet when he moved to Vence, France in 1992. Between 1994 and 1996, he worked on major commission pieces in France, Australia and the US including a portrait of John Green as a knight, the two large “Prodigal Son” pieces, a large commission from Billabong in Australia, and two portraits of Senator of Nevada, Bill Hernstadt in Los Angeles. In 1997, Brett moved back to settle in France and studied stained glass. He opened a school while working on “Hidden Agenda,” a large tryptic. His clients for portrait commission pieces include Ringo Starr and Barbara Bach in London as well as several well know celebrities and polititians in the US. In 2003, he worked on a commission piece of Ringo Starr’s hand. In the following year, he won prize at the “Not the Turner Prize” Competition, Mall Gallery, London. This is also the year he started the anatomical stained glass pieces. He decided to move to Thailand in 2006 to find new direction and to develop new ideas. In 2007, he began to create a history of art series by taking everyday ordinary objects and making them extraordinary. His new body of work includes a series of chrome ultra mixers and kitchen pots as well as a collection of hand painted and witty fiberglass sculptures, pondering the fine line between kitsch and art. Thus in his new series, the idea is to take the kitsch object to the point of art while at the same time creating a diversion by placing the work of great masters on the object that is totally out of context to the paintings.