About

 Anthony Neilson

Anthony Neilson is a landscape artist who has used both paint and photography as mediums for artistic expression for over 40 years. A dedicated climber with a passion for colour and light, he has a unique style of interpreting the landscape he sees.

After many years as a prominent photographic artist Anthony changed his focus to painting with acrylic. His primary subject has been mountain landscapes of the Canadian Rockies.

Style and Influences

My artistic style is influenced by my early exposure to the work of a relative*, German American expressionist Lyonel Feininger. It was the very first art work I ever noticed before I even knew what art was. His work was a constant presence in my home growing up. Borrowing on Feininger’s use of straight lines to describe his subjects, I found it natural to adapt those techniques to the mountain environments I was familiar with. Although Feininger did not paint mountains, his paintings of buildings influenced me through his use of shadows and sharp divisions of tone and colour.  To describe structures in a similar way to the way I see the natural architecture of mountains.

Another influence is the landscape painting of American artist Georgia O’Keeffe. Her use of vivid colour and shadows resonates with me. I look at her landscape paintings and I see a landscape distilled down to it’s most basic shapes and colours, I find it inspiring, because I see the landscape around me in a very similar way.

I am also influenced by my own work as a photographer. Having spent years working with Kodachrome film, I see landscapes with the saturated, high contrast bias so common in the film of that era.  In addition, my photographic style often uses telephoto lenses to isolate the subject from its surroundings, in a similar way to a portrait photographer, concentrating on the character and features of the subject. This just carried on through to my work in paint.

*Lyonel Feininger was my Great uncle.