Between Form and Feeling

Cape Cod artist Richard Neal creates richly layered works of mixed media art that express his feelings on society and our world as a whole.

In a digital age where consuming art is often reduced to a quick glance on a smooth and sleek screen, Richard Neal seeks to hold the onlooker’s gaze when they encounter one of his paintings. Large in scale, rippling with texture, and lying somewhere between abstraction and reality, his works are an invitation to take the time to seek out their many layers.

The physical nature of his works stems in part from his education in sculpture and his lifelong career in construction. Neal attended Southeastern Massachusetts University, now The University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, with the intention of focusing on painting but that trajectory took a detour during his sophomore year when a particularly influential professor joined the faculty. “He was a classically trained, old world Italian man with a no-nonsense attitude,” recalls Neal. 

That year he came to grips with the basics of making figureheads and eventually full figures in clay before casting them in plaster molds. Tragically, the professor passed away from cancer before Neal’s junior year. The next year presented Neal with an opportunity to learn a whole new approach to sculpting, and he found himself working with wood and steel under the guidance of a professor who encouraged abstraction. 

Taking what he’d learned from the old and new schools, Neal went on to earn a master’s degree at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan where his work focused on making large steel and bronze outdoor sculptures.

With his degree in hand, he came...