Michael J. McNeil
Mixed-media Painter
Studio and Gallery
19042 Whisper Lane
Bloomington IL 61704
309-378-2338


Mike completed an art major with an emphasis in painting at Southeast Missouri State College in Cape Girardeau, Mo. He attended Washington University in St. Louis and took graduate classes in drawing and painting.

“My primary media is acrylic; however I use almost anything available in the studio. Oil paints, pencil, shoe polish, chalk, markers. If it works for the effect I’m after, it’s on the canvas. “Most of my work is about Edges, Frames and Filters. Frames because the act of recording something— music, painting, or a script— are all methods of “framing” an idea. Edges because all of the edges are artificially imposed by man, the painting edge along with the field edge, house edge, or the edge of the automobile window. Filters are from both a communication perspective and because I have the beginnings of cataracts which make things seem bluer to me than they really are. I have been experimenting with tissue applied over the paint on wet varnish and then varnished again. Sometimes the tissue is flat and other times folded and wrinkled. I’ve created landscape and farm scenes with many edges and frames, and I become the first filter and the viewer is the second.”

Mike’s paintings are part of private collections in eleven states. He also has work that is displayed in corporate collections held by: Pinnacle Actuarial Resources, Heartland Bank and Trust, Harmer and Associates, Iowa School Board State Headquarters, Interstate Center, Guthoff, Mehall & Allen and Company, Sulaski and Webb CPAs, and University of Nebraska Library.

Visitors are always welcome to visit his studio or see Mike at the Farmer's Market on the Square in Downtown Bloomington. Mike is also associated with the Timothy Kent Gallery in Bloomington, Illinois.