Skip to content

Artist Statement

Most of my work starts at the intersection of tradition and technology.

I began my creative career in traditional art, studying drawing, painting, sculpture, and storytelling. And as technology has grown to infiltrate every aspect of contemporary life, I have worked to find the ways in which these seemingly at-odds methods of creating intersect and grow around each other. This work is ongoing and constantly evolving.

My art explores how we translate tradition and aesthetics into our dynamic modern world. To this end, I have created multi-linear interactive digital stories during the days of the Jurassic Internet. I have hand-painted functional QR codes that point to 100-year-old films of dying elephants. I have used classical methods to paint the feverish images created by Generative Adversarial Networks.

Through these works and others, I seek to demonstrate how we can use technology to enhance craft and individuality.

Bio

Neal Von Flue teaches drawing and painting at the high-school level as well as private classes. Earlier in his career he spent 15 years as a working artist and illustrator. Neal currently serves on the Arts and Culture Advisory Committee for the City of El Segundo and was president of the El Segundo Art Association. He is a guest speaker for groups and schools. Neal’s current presentation, The Creativity Diagram, is a way of categorizing the internalized resources available to artists to help them grow their ideas and troubleshoot during their process. It is now available.

He is also a writer, creating essays on history, art and culture, as well as the occasional piece of fiction. His short story “They Made Seven Thomas Jeffersons” was published in the print anthology “El Segundo Writes”

Neal is currently working at a studio in the Smokey Hollow section of El Segundo. It is filled with art, machines, motorcycles, car parts and taxidermy. For appointments to see new work, please contact him.

Interviews/documentation:

Tradition Meets Technology– El Segundo Scene Magazine, 2020

Bitclout Artists Spotlight– Artfunder.org, 2021

Marking Transition: The Work of Neal Von Flue– Hanli Geyser, 2012

Writing

They Made Seven Thomas Jeffersons

This short story is currently available in my book “Sweeping Up After The Party is Over”. (Original Fiction, 2500 words)

Standing on the corner of Innovation and Propaganda

A study of the smoke in Winsor McCay’s “Sinking of the Lusitania” (Essay, 2900 words)

"This One's for You, Walt."

An inspection of the most underrated artist of this century, and how irony might have saved him. (Essay, 2000 words)

Pity The Humble Luthier

Gustav Metzger’s Auto-Destructive Art haunts us to the edge of taste (Essay, 1700 words)

Friedl Dicker-Brandeis

The Alchemist of Theresienstadt (Essay, 3100 words)

"My friend Vito Told Me This Morning That I Am A Philistine"

On how much of the public should be involved in public art, or why we should hold on tightly to failure. (Essay, 2400 words) 

How One Bad Review Can Really Change Your Life

John Everett Millais, Charles Dickens, and the Pre-Raphaelite vision (Essay, 4600 words)

On Hospitals

In two chapters  (Original Prose, 1300 words)

The Cubist Contribution to Camouflage and the History of Visual Warfare

Lee Miller and Roland Penrose Part 1 (Essay, 1500 words)

So Much More than the Girl in Hitler's Tub

Lee Miller and Roland Penrose Part 2 (Essay 2400 words)

Only 16% of his dreams survived

The story of Batiste Madalena and George Eastman (Essay, 1700 words)

How Data Inspired Dada

Or the graph’s effect on abstraction (Essay, 1500 words)

In Some Respects it is Light

The legacy of Jay Defeo. (Essay, 1900 words)