Neil Raitt

Neil Raitt gives a modern, surreal twist to the kitschy landscapes popularized by Bob Ross’s classic TV show The Joy of Painting. At first glance, Raitt’s compositions of mountains, tropical beaches, and waterfalls—often duplicated many times within the same canvas—suggest digitized reproduction, yet he painstakingly renders the repeated forms by hand, in oil. By using subtle shifts in color to create gradients and patterns amid repeating motifs, the artist blurs the line between figuration and abstraction. Raitt studied fine art at Norwich University College of the Arts before receiving his MA in painting from the Royal College of Art in 2013. Since then, he has exhibited in New York, Paris, Los Angeles, Taipei, Cologne, and London. His works belong to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the DePaul Art Museum, and the Saatchi Collection.