Ross Neher

From Artland and ARTFORUM

Born in 1949, Ross Neher was primarily inspired by the 1960s. Ross Neher is an established contemporary artist. 

It seems that Neher has long been afflicted by an acute sense of “body-mind duality.” From childhood, painting was for him an escape, a solitary, contemplative way of expressing himself. However, as a mature, literate painter, he is bound to deal with the surrounding context of modern art. Neher has found a solution to his dilemma by believing in something as fervently as possible to link the desire to paint with the need to respond to current painting culture. To place his hopes for resolution in belief rather than knowledge he sees as the only way to secure a serious external reception for his obsession.

Neher lived his early life surrounded by the rich, inspirational landscape of the upper Hudson. A Wordsworthian mind would have found a lifetime of work in that environment, and the adolescent Romanticism in Neher did include copying Hudson River masters. But he dealt with art inspired by the environment rather than with the environment itself, denying himself the pure and immediate feelings available from “sensual experience in the immediate presence of nature” and choosing instead a distilled, almost ascetic, approach.