Andrea McNeill

I paint the landscape as it feels rather than exactly as it looks. I have painted for 23 years in acrylic, oils and watercolor. I moved to Oregon in 2020 to be closer to my young adult children and have loved painting the Willamette Valley, vineyards and farmland, the Oregon Coast and Columbia River Gorge. I'm mostly drawn to the moments when light, weather and water soften a place into something closer to memory.

My style is loose and expressive, sitting between representation and abstraction. I work both on location and in the studio, from field sketches and reference photographs. I let washes mingle, keep edges soft and leave the white of the paper to breathe. An open, suggestive painting asks nothing of the viewer; it offers a place to rest the eyes and lets each person bring their own memories of Oregon to it.

Water runs through everything I make. It is my medium, carrying pigment across the paper in ways I guide but never fully control, and my subject: the Pacific surf, the Columbia moving through the Gorge, rain softening the valley. It is also what we are made of. Painting with water, about water, feels like a quiet way of honoring the life it sustains.