neal novak

I am a self-taught artist who is searching for a voice through painting. I am most influenced by twentieth-century artists who attempted to bridge the gap between expressionism and abstraction. Painters like Chaim Soutine--much overlooked in my opinion--capture what I keep looking for in my own paintings: the viewer enjoys a fleeting moment of recognition before the composition falls apart. I like my art to engage and even challenge the viewer, requiring him or her to retrace the steps I took during the creative process. For this reason, I am also drawn to action painters like de Kooning, abstract expressionists like Rothko and Diebenkorn, neo-expressionists like Basquiat, and abstract pioneers like Richter.