2014 Catalogue Archive

Neil Raitt creates large-scale oil paintings that explore the excessive nature of visual information through landscape paintings. His use of familiar “Bob Ross iconography” – alpine mountains and evergreen trees – is a practice in repetition, blurring the line between figuration and abstraction. In this immersive painting, Evergreen (Fade), the viewer is drawn through a hypnotic and mesmerizing composition of cool and natural colors. The work is comforting in imagery, yet surreal in presentation. Raitt has exhibited at Royal Academy of Arts and at Hockney Gallery, RCA, London. His work is held in a number of private and public collections, including Franks-Suss Collection and Saatchi Gallery, London. In 2013, Raitt was granted the prestigious artist residency from the Martini Arte Internazionale in Turin, and in 2009 he was awarded the Attenborough Prize for emerging talent in the visual arts. He won the 2014 Catlin Art Prize and is currently an artist-in-residence at Goss-Michael Foundation.