Draftsman/artist makes his mark at MERA

Nov 12, 2014

Michael Neelin is no stranger to McDonalds Corners. Neelin's family has owned a cottage in the area for almost 50 years and his love of both heritage architecture and natural landscape was one of the reasons why in April 2014 he moved from Pontiac, Quebec, where he had lived and worked for over 20 years, to McDonalds Corners. He moved into a new home in McDonalds Corners, which he designed and had built.

With a degree in architectural history and trained as an architectural technologist, Neelin makes his living designing timber-frame homes, and he operates his own business called Riversong Design. While he loves his work and the fact that it has paid the bills for years, he admits that there is also an artist in him. In fact he started drawing and sketching long before he became a designer of homes. “It was a trip I took to France with my parents as a teenager that ignited my love for sketching and drawing historic architecture and the natural world, and it is a fascination that has never left me”, he said at the opening of his show, titled “Fenceline and Shoreline”, at the MERA schoolhouse.

The show is comprised of numerous drawings, mainly done in graphite. Included are meticulous drawings of old, leaning barns and sprawling heritage farms in their natural surroundings. One of the best of these are of the barns at Clontarf, which are long aged but also maintain their unique architectural integrity. Neelin’s drawing technique is often so precise and fine that the textural beauty of the barn board stands front and centre and is matched by the grace with which he composes the subject in the frame.

His works also draw him to urban heritage architecture like the old Almonte Post office, Confederation Square and Parliament Hill in Ottawa, and a beautiful brick building that he depicts in a work titled “Hollywood Parade”, where the front of the building is masterfully and painstakingly represented.

Some of the architectural drawings can also lean towards the cartoonish side, as in “Breen's store in Clontarf” which appears more like a quaint drawing for a children’s book. However, these also have their own special charms.

The natural world is also one of Neelin's muses and he explained that he never tires of the way “beauty occurs so spontaneously in the natural world” - like the two downed trees that sprawl on a river bank or the tall, thick cedar trees that spring from a rocky river bed in another work. It takes a master draftsman to be able to put graphite to paper and bring one’s subject to life and Neelin is a talented artist who puts his heart and soul into every pencil line that he makes.

He was pleased with the close to 50 people who turned out for the opening of the show, which will remain on display at MERA for the month of November. Neelin said that he is grateful to not only to have a place to show his artworks but also to have such a fine source of art education and entertainment available locally at MERA.