Neil Raitt Between a Rock and a Setting Sun, 2021, Anat Ebgi, Installation view
About
Neil Raitt’s surreal landscapes test limits of reality and artificiality. His paintings depict impossible horizons and forego the idea of an original relationship to a real or even specific place. Terrains, climates, disparate geographies are all mixed together becoming a portal to an emotional or psychological space. Their impossibleness acts almost as a parody or critique of traditional sea and landscapes and argues for the possibility of fresh perspectives. Free from nostalgia and lamentation of fading natural beauty, Raitt’s landscapes have a mythological quality conveyed both through the saturated intensity of his color and the particularity of his perspective.
Neil Raitt (b. 1986) received his MA from the Royal College of Art, London in 2013. Over the past ten years he has been included in solo and group exhibitions at Anat Ebgi, Los Angeles, CA; Galerie Judin, Berlin, Germany; Nicelle Beauchene, New York, NY; The Cabin, Los Angeles, CA; Chez Valentin, Paris; Choi & Lager, Cologne; The Hole, New York, NY; and Lin & Lin Gallery, Taipei, Taiwan. His work has been exhibited at institutions including the Centre d’art contemporain La Halle des bouchers, Vienne; Villa Du Parc centre d’art contemporain, Annemasse; the DePaul University Art Museum, Chicago; and the Goss-Michael Foundation, Dallas. He was the recipient of the Northern Trust Acquisition Prize, 2016 and the Catlin Art Prize, 2014. His work is in the permanent collections of Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), Los Angeles, CA; DePaul Art Museum, Chicago; Saatchi Collection, London; and Frank-Suss Collection, London. Raitt lives and works in London.
Spotlight: Fantastical Landscapes Take on Conceptual Meaning in British Artist Neil Raitt’s Current Exhibition
Each of Raitt’s works inspires prolonged looking. Even in repetitious compositions, the deviations between what at first seem to be identical vignettes (perhaps qualifying as Ross’s “happy accidents”?), ranging between the pristine and the painterly, reveal the artist’s hand and the subtlety of his execution. —Artnet News
Les Benjamins Joins Forces With British Artist Neil Raitt, Fusing Together Culture, Heritage and Luxury with Urban Dressing
“For this collection, I was inspired by the caravans that would carry goods along with this vast network. I enjoyed inventing the camels in painted form, and imagining the kind of goods they would be carrying, juxtaposing notions of luxury and labor." —Neil Raitt
"The mountains, trees, and other natural motifs within my work come from quite a manufactured world. I’m attracted to their simplicity and the way that a drag of paint can represent an expanse of space." —Neil Raitt
The exhibition forms a fictitious world in which visual devices, such as a mirrored screen, divide the room and reflect the landscapes of the paintings, placing the viewer inside the maze-like nature of the work. —Art Viewer
'Imitation Sand’ weaves together a narrative of displacement, romanticism and internal-logic that subverts the domestic element of the paintings which are plucked from the context of decoration and display. —Meer
‘Imitation Sand’ weaves together narrative of displacement, romanticism and internal-logic that subverts the domestic element of the paintings which are plucked from the context of decoration and display. —OFLUXO
Neil Raitt goes from one register to another, from the real towards the surreal, from figuration towards abstraction, from image to object. The landscapes become infinite spaces of projection, like that screen cum-mirror reflecting the paintings and prints around it. —Julie Crenn
Both shows were completely immersive, creating lush, fictive landscapes for the romantic ideal of the painter—through the lens of an L.A. transplant. For Raitt, the idea of the American landscape is informed by growing up in Britain and seeing Bob Ross on TV, but the latest works in the show seem to reflect his recent move to Los Angeles. —Joe Reihsen
The first impression is that one is on a stage, enjoying an elaborate set design. There are no actors, but you and your friends become performers. —Edward Goldman
Ross’s already idealized colors—for which he licensed a commercially available line of paints and accompanying brushes that Raitt sometimes uses—are mutated by Raitt into a kaleidoscope of amplified, unnatural hues. —Jennifer S. Li
The British artist Neil Raitt is a lover of the amateur, a fan of the Sunday painter, who takes such a degree of spiritual guidance from the TV art teacher Bob Ross that he uses the same brands of Van Dyke brown and titanium white in his own paintings of cabins and landscapes repeated at intervals, wallpaper-style. —Andrew M. Goldstein
As Chicago’s renewed appreciation of Roger Brown proceeds apace, I was pleasantly surprised by Neil Raitt’s tongue-in-cheek paintings of repeated landscape passages. Like Brown, Raitt glories in kitschy repetition and clever facture. —Luke A. Fidler
Maybe Vista’s passion for Cactaceae rubbed off with prickly abandon. Maybe Neil Raitt just made some fucking lovely art and put it in a gallery. —James Davidson
"During my time at the RCA studying for my masters, I became inspired by the idea of taking the work as close to pattern as possible before changing direction just before it collapses into repetition." —Neil Raitt
A residency and exhibition at the Goss Michael Foundation in Dallas was followed by an exhibition at Anat Ebgi in LA, who he also showed with at NADA in New York. If that wasn’t enough, back in London on his home turf, he’s set up a studio and project space with some fellow RCA alums called Westminster Waste.
Catlin Art Prize 2014 at Londonewcastle Project Space
The judging panel of Turner Prize winner Mark Wallinger, art critic and writer Coline Milliard, and gallery director and curator Will Jarvis opted to give the £5000 prize to Neil Raitt, for his repetitious alpine scenes. —Joe Turnbull
Neil’s paintings make use of pattern and skewed perspective to meld distinct symbols of nature into mazes of abstraction. A trellis backdrop, spray-painted using a stencil, enhances the theme of repetition, while a giant three-dimensional ‘Magic Tree’ air freshener, coated in a fragrant sap green paint, is a droll nod to his paintings of alpine mountain ranges. —Mark Westall
Neil Raitt Announced As Winner Of Catlin Art Prize 2014
“We were all immediately struck by the effectiveness of Neil’s work. It needs no mediation, directly addressing the viewer and achieving what it sets out to do. There is nothing superfluous. It is spare, determined, accomplished and knowing. Easy to look at but with a hypnotic depth, its apparent simplicity belies a painstaking technique and quiet maturity” —Mark Wallinger
Interview: Neil Raitt by Harriet Thorpe Catlin Art Prize #7
"The process itself becomes a game of plotting land, avoiding it building up into pattern and breaking that down. Each peak overlaps the next one so it has this effect of falling down and it remains somewhere between random and patternistic. It’s important to find that balance. When I’m working it’s easy for the pattern to become very linear, a lot of it is about avoiding that." —Neil Raitt
![This image depicts an artwork by Neil Raitt titled "Racing Green." This artwork was created in 2022 and measures 100 x 70 cm [HxW] (39 ³⁄₈" x 27 ⁹⁄₁₆"). Its medium is Oil on canvas.](https://anatebgi.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Neil-Raitt_NR1295_1665687325.jpg)
![This image depicts an artwork by Neil Raitt titled "Flower Garden." This artwork was created in 2022 and measures 100 x 70 cm [HxW] (39 ³⁄₈" x 27 ⁹⁄₁₆"). Its medium is Oil on canvas.](https://anatebgi.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Neil-Raitt_NR1294_1665687331.jpg)
