Alan Neider was born in Norfolk, VA. He was highly influenced by his grandparents. His grandmother did number paintings and crafts while his grandfather painted the outside of their house every summer and the interior every winter.
Six years after moving to Los Angeles he enrolled in El Camino Jr. College. The school had a great art department that woke him up to possibilities of being an artist. He then graduated from California State University-Long Beach in Ceramics. He received an MFA in Sculpture from Washington University in St. Louis.
While in graduate school, he received a Robert Rauschenberg Work Grant. Neider worked as medical illustrator for five years before moving to Chicago where he continued his painting practice while completing several large scale public art works.
Moving to the east coast the output and scale of his work was smaller as he earned a living in commercial illustration. As time progressed the illustration took a back seat to his 3-dimensional paintings. His art has
from the beginning been about creating difficult and challenging surfaces and forms to paint on and into.
from the beginning been about creating difficult and challenging surfaces and forms to paint on and into.
For the past three years Neider has been sewing textured fabric on and painting into U-Haul moving blankets. The Blanket Paintings are his first encounter with blankets as a substrate to paint. They hang, fold and drape exposing some or parts of the painted surface. Neider next felt the forms needed more structure. He built frames and stretched the blankets, with sewn fabric, over the frames. This led to a project of forty paintings utilizing the blankets and the same size frames. There are four groups of ten paintings each.
His current work involves quilted blankets, fabric and paint. These paintings are free hanging with paint being handled in an expressive and gestural manner.
“My work has always been about painting. I built out from the surface of my first paintings because the forms needed to come out into space. Some early paintings were free standing 3-dimensional forms. Some of the forms I have built and painted include: chairs, lamps, curtains, dresses as well as dimensional abstract paintings that hang on the wall. I create/build difficult and challenging surfaces to paint. I believe these surfaces in conjunction with the inherent textures wood, fabric, ceramics lead to a richer, complex experience.”