Kia Neill

Kia Neill is native to Chicago IL, and has lived in various parts of the country before finding home in Alma, here in Park County. She received her MFA from The University of California San Diego and has taught art for 20 years, ranging from universities to non-profit art centers. She currently teaches in Breckenridge Creative Arts, for The Colorado Photographic Art Center, and Think 360 Arts. She is a multidisciplined artist working in photography, video, drawing, painting, ceramics, sculpture and installation. Her photo-based mixed media collages and paintings have been her present focus, and she has produced a number of these as commissions for Southwest Airlines Hobby International Airport, City of Houston Department of Public Waste, The Children’s Museum of Denver Mariposa Campus, the Aspen Police Department, the Town of Silverthorne, and Meow Wolf Denver Convergence Station. She additionally has served as a juror on several artist grant panels and recently curated the Breck Create Instructor Exhibition. This past winter she painted a mural for the Town of Silverthorne in the bus station lobby, and a mural for Yo Mama’s Cantina in Breckenridge.

"My work is inspired by the Colorado Rockies landscape, the old dilapidated mines spread throughout, and the push-pull relationship between human use of landscape and the land constantly reclaiming itself. The work is also heavily influenced by my own sense of spirituality in relation to nature, as I reflect upon the “conversations” I have with the mountain while exploring new terrain, challenging athletic endurance, facing fears and limitations, and decompressing mental setbacks. Through abstraction in photography, mixed media and collage I strive to portray something more about a landscape than the way it literally appears. My aim is to hint at an ephemeral experience, to suggest multiple points of time, or perhaps imply landscape as a whimsical “beast” constantly in motion."

                                                                                                                                                                     -Kia Neill