COSTA MESA, CA.- Feels Like Home, currently on view at Newport Harbor Art Museum, OCMA, examines the role of kinship, chosen family, and the importance of community within the work of Alice Neel (January 28, 1900 – October 13, 1984) , American visual artist, who was known for her portraits depicting friends, family, lovers, poets, artists, and strangers. Her paintings have an expressionistic use of line and color, psychological acumen, and emotional intensity.

A curated selection of forty paintings, many pulled from the estate’s collection, focuses on Neel’s honest, intimate paintings of her home, children, animals, and expanded family. Everyday occurrences—from two nuns walking arm in arm in the park to folks gathered in a movie theater lobby—also demonstrate a close bond with New York, which provided Neel with a sense of belonging, enabling the artist to create her own definition of family.

Images of the city are combined with paintings of parents and siblings, embraces between children and their beloved pets, and detailed insights into the artists and poets in Neel’s circle—revealing the extraordinary breadth of an artist for whom there was no separation between art and life. Brought together for the first time in OCMA’s exhibition, the works in Feels Like Home allow us to see the world from Neel’s unique point of view, reminding us that there is a multitude of ways to make and build a home.

Since its founding, OCMA has been a leader in presenting and preserving the art of our time. When thirteen visionary women came together in 1962 to open the museum—then called the Balboa Pavilion Gallery—they shared a powerful conviction that Orange County needed a venue where important art could be enjoyed. From the seed of this idea, a small art gallery became the Newport Harbor Art Museum in 1968 and the Orange County Museum of Art in 1997. As OCMA’s collections, exhibitions, and programs have grown, so has its reputation of investing in promising artists and helping shape art history.

Alice Neel: Feels Like Home is organized by Courtenay Finn, Chief Curator.

Newport Harbor Art Museum, OCMA
Alice Neel: Feels Like Home
June 23rd, 2023 – October 22nd, 2023