Drive to Draw – A New Collection by Scott MacNeill

Reported Wednesday, May 15, 2024

Pictured Above: By Scott McNeill. Photo Credit: Contributed.

Newsroom Post: LAMBERTVILLE, NEW JERSEY

Driven to Draw  Drawings of Cars and other Roadside Things at the Luminary Coffee Shop From May 31st until July 15th  243 North Union Street Street  Lambertville ,NJ

The opening reception is set for Friday, May 31st, 5:30 – 8PM

Lambertville, NJ – The Driven to Draw Show at the Luminary Coffee is a unique presentation of a visionary artist’s newest collection of historic and dynamic drawing featuring cars and other transport vehicles.

The basis of this work by the artist is centered within America’s romance with the Automobile. For Scott MacNeill, this romance began with his childhood, growing up in Detroit in the 1950s and 60s. The Motor City, starting in the 1920s, changed the world. No other thing equals the automobile in how it transformed life and helped create our present perspective of the world. The gleam of chrome, the reflections off the glossy paint and the open invitation to freedom is the car’s promise of adventure, as well as the hub on which our existence still revolves. This is the core of the artist’s fascination with our collective personal relationship with the car and the road. This drawing show is a micro history of USA history, using examples of our earliest 1920s cars, 1960s American steel & New Jersey Diners and other detailed classic American rides. One especially noteworthy large drawing in this show one of the original Rosa Parks’ Bus… the bus where in 1955, in Montgomery Alabama, Rosa Parks refused to give up her bus seat to a white man, starting one of the USA’s most famous civil rights actions.

The interesting technique this artist has used in creating this art starts with the classic grid method of dividing up the work surface into multiple equal sized squares, allowing an easier transferring of the artist’s original photographic image onto the color tinted canvas surface. A few chosen restrictions in the physical creation of this work has this artist working within each small square of the grid as an individual spot of attention. The artist views only a single square of the original reference and then draws each square, one at a time. The fantastic finals results seen in this show rewards the viewer with a 3 level visual experience. At distance, this art appears to be a photorealistic painting. In moving closer, the square grid effect reveals a surface fractured into faceted squares that do not meet up perfectly. At very close range, the image further transforms because the artist has decided to use a directional stroke pattern that alternates from square to square.

Pictured Above: By Scott McNeill. Photo Credit: Contributed.

Scott MacNeill is a recently retired professional illustrator and long time Lambertville resident. Scott’s profession work began after his graduation from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn NY. A short list of his notable clients have included: Pepsi, The NYTimes, Newsweek, American Express, The Wall Street Journal, Hewitt-Packard, Vogue, Hilton Hotels and many other national and international magazines & newspapers. His work has been used to promote local community activities like the ShadFest, The Historical Society’s House Tour and the Kalmia Club’s Garden Tour. He is also locally known as the Chair(s) Guy (with thousands of drawings of chairs in diverse guises and situations) and the curator for the Lambertville free Library Gallery Space.