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