Career
Primarily a portrait painter, his subjects have included novelist Francis Stuart (for the Ulster Museum), former Lord Mayor of Belfast David Cook (for Belfast City Council), football player Derek Dougan and fellow artists Colin Middleton and Terry Frost. He also paints the figure and still life, taking a self-consciously childlike approach to composition and colour. His work also includes printmaking, and he has designed stained glass for the Ulster Museum and Saint Colman"s Church, Lambeg, County Antrim.
He lives in Hillsborough, County Down.
Shawcross studied at Bolton College of Art from 1955 to 1958, and Lancaster College of Art from 1958 to 1960, before moving to Belfast in 1962 to take up a part-time lecturer"s post at the Belfast College of Art, becoming full-time in 1968. He continued to lecture there until his retirement in 2004.
He has also lectured at Pennsylvania State University in the United States. Neil is a Patron of the charity YouthAction Northern Ireland.
He has exhibited nationally, with one-man shows in London, Manchester, Dublin and Belfast, and internationally in Hong Kong and the United States, and his work is found in many private and corporate collections.
