Neil Meitzler was an American painter, well known in the Pacific Northwest for his landscapes and scenes of nature, rendered in a distinctive, modern style.
Background
Meitzler was born Herbert Neil Claussen in Pueblo, Colorado, on September 14, 1930. Seeking work in the midst of the Great Depression, his family moved to Oregon, where Neil began using his stepfather"s last name, after his father died and his mother remarried. His mother and stepfather were devout Seventh-day Adventists.
Education
Master of Fine Arts, University Washington, 1957.
Career
He is often associated with the "Northwest School" art movement. When he was twelve his family moved again, to Orting, Washington (near Tacoma), and started a successful greenhouse flower-growing business. Meitzler had been interested in art from early youth, and wanted to be either a professional artist or a minister.
After leaving high school he moved to Seattle, and eventually began working as a draftsman at Boeing.
Meitzler"s early work was firmly rooted in traditional landscape painting, eventually showing the influence of mid-century Modern art, but it wasn"t until his introduction to the "Northwest mystics" and Asian art that his work reached full flower. His landscapes, often featuring rocks and waterfalls, took on a soft, otherworldly glow, while blurring the line between representational and abstract art
Beginning in 1957, Meitzler worked as an exhibition designer at the Seattle Art Museum. Throughout his life Meitzler was torn by conflict between his homosexuality and his religious faith.
A short marriage in the early 1950s produced a son, but ended acrimoniously.
A happier marriage, to Marcia Dawson, who had two young daughters, lasted from 1972 to 1987. In 1989 Meitzler returned to Washington, settling in Walla Walla, where he worked for a publishing company and lived with Ikune Sawada, a painter and master landscaper. The two built a comfortably eccentric home/studio with an elaborate Japanese garden in back, and spent much time in Japan.
Meitzler continued to paint, exploring new stylistic directions and occasionally exhibiting.
He died on February 21st, 2009, after a struggle with pancreatic cancer. A major, in-depth retrospective of Meitzler"s career was presented at Whitman College"s Sheehan Gallery, in Walla Walla, in 2010.
His work is found in significant private, corporate, and museum collections across the United States, including the Seattle Art Museum, the Henry Art Gallery, the Memphis Academy of Art, the Washington County Museum of Art in Maryland, Museum of Northwest Art in Laconner Washington, Whatcom Museum, Bellingham, the Jundt Art Museum at Gonzaga University, and in the collection of the Imperial Family of Japan.
Achievements
Connections
Married Darlene Dinwiddie, October 1, 1951 (divorced 1965). Children: Kenneth Neil Palmore, Charlotte Meitzler Engelhart, Carrie Meitzler Leonard.