For the
2015 People Issue, I sat down with seventh-generation Nashvillian Michael Shane Neal to talk about his impressive 25-year career as a portrait artist. Read more about how he got his start, what he considers his big break and who he'd love to paint someday.
When did you first discover a love for painting and art?
I probably loved art all of my life, but I guess I was about 19 or 20 before I looked at it as something that I could do. It still probably hadn't quite entered my mind that it was a potential professional choice. I started drawing when I was 3 or 4 years old with a lot of intensity and drew until I was 15 and got a job at HG Hills as a bag boy. I saved my first three paychecks and I went to a local art store and bought an easel, a set of paints and a palette, and I set it all up in my parents' garage and tried to paint. There were no examples of painters in my family; there were no artists. There are creative people, but they weren't painters. I knew so little that I bought what was a presentation easel, although it looked like an easel to me — it had the nice little chain between the back and the two front legs — and I put it together and I started to paint, and the first brushstroke the whole thing just fell over on the floor. So after two or three times of it wanting to fall, I ended up taking duct tape and taping the feet to the floor. That's how little I knew about wanting to paint, but I knew I wanted to do it.
When you first starting painting as a teenager, what did you paint?
As a good Tennessean, I painted a barn. That was the first painting. I’ve still got it. I wouldn't dare show it. I actually tried to paint a barn with foliage around it, it was like a Tennessee barn, and it was pretty bad. And then I think the next thing I tried to paint was a desert scene from a photograph I'd seen in a book. The first paintings were not people. They were landscapes and things like that. And then when I was in college, this one teacher who painted and drew portraits introduced us to pastels and painting with pastels. There was a man who used to be at Lipscomb who was well-known — in fact he used to be a writer for The Tennessean — his name was Henry Arnold .... and he had the most fascinating head I'd ever seen. And I asked him if he'd pose for a drawing for me with these new pastels I'd gotten from class. And I did the drawing and it just had a certain something. I was so excited about it and I remember rushing home with it to show my parents what I'd done. I was probably 19. When they liked it and thought it was good and others did, I started to want to do it more and more and see if I could somehow pull it together and create a likeness on a blank piece of paper.
Looking back on your career, what would you consider your big break?
The big break moment was 15 years ago when I entered a painting in a big competition, in my world, called the Portrait Society of America's International Portrait Competition. There are always 1,500+ paintings that are entered and they come from all over the world. That year, I made it to the finals, and I won the thing! And to get the grand prize for that competition was really big because there's a lot of press that goes with it. I didn't even know that there was a curator at the United States Senate — I didn't know a lot of things, I still don't know a lot of things — but I just didn't realize that there were all of these opportunities for painting portraits that existed out there beyond just someone wanting their wife painted or their husband. But suddenly this whole thing about historical portraits or government portraits was something that was new to me.
Right after I won, within a couple of months, I got a phone call from the assistant curator of the United States Senate. I got a call and they told me that they had selected me to do a portrait for the wall of the Senate reception room, right off the Senate Chamber, of a senator who had died 50 years before. They decided that he was of such historical merit that they wanted to portray him over this doorway in an oval that had been left empty since the 1870s. His name was Arthur Vandenberg, from Michigan, so I said I'd love to do it and we started to make plans after that, and then 9/11 happened.
I actually thought it was going to be the end of my big break because everything came to a screeching halt .... They wrote me a letter to say they weren't going to be doing anything for a while. Three or four months after that, President Bush made this big statement that government was going to open back up full force, business as usual, and I got a call saying they were moving forward with the commission.
You've painted some pretty impressive people in your 25-year career: Sandra Day O'Connor, Bill Frist, Martha Ingram, Morgan Freeman, Jimmy Fallon, just to name a few. Who's on your dream list of clients?
President of the United States, which I want to paint some day if I'm lucky enough. I'm too young now, but I hope some day. I'd love to paint some member of the Royal Family in Great Britain. That would be pretty cool. The Queen is one of the most painted people in the world. I think it's nearly 100 portraits that she has sat for. If you go to the Duke of Edinburgh's website and read about him, one of his official duties is — and I'm not making this up — to sit for portraits. So that would be neat to paint for some royals. But honestly, the better answer would really be the next client because you're just always dreaming that there's somebody else that wants you to paint their portrait. I wish I could go back in time and paint someone like Theodore Roosevelt, who I just admire so much. I got to paint him — posthumously, obviously — from some photographs for a guy in Washington, D.C., who owned a house that Theodore Roosevelt once owned. He wanted a portrait of Theodore Roosevelt for the foyer of this house and couldn't find a period portrait that wasn't already in a collection somewhere. He ultimately turned to a New York art gallery to find an artist to paint one from photographs and I ended up getting the job, which was a dream. He's one of my heroes. I love Theodore Roosevelt.
Are there any commissions that you really wanted or came close to getting that ended up falling through or went another way?
Yes, yes. I was on a short list to paint Gerald Ford one time in Ann Arbor, Michigan, at a university that was naming something after him. It ended up that myself and two other artists were considered and in the end someone else got it. I really hated that because I would have really loved to have painted Gerald Ford. I was up for a Secretary of State in the last few years and it got down to me and another artist. I ended up not getting it, but you're flattered that you're so close. Just when I don't get that, then I get the portrait to paint the American ambassador to France when I actually thought I had ended up not getting that job. I've never, ever allowed it to get me down too long because I've had too many things come my way. So when I don't get something, there's a natural competitiveness ... but I never let it get me down for very long because I just think 'You've been blessed beyond,' especially at my age … I'm talking about my age like I'm this really young guy, but I am sort of young in the industry.
Lastly, I want to talk about your style. You have a certain throwback style about you. You wear three-piece suits six days a week, you drive a 1946 Chevy Fleetmaster, you live in this beautiful English manor-style home. Where does that style come from?
I'm not exactly sure that I can piece it all together because I haven't quite thought of it that way. I can tell you that I grew up spending a lot of time with older people and older relatives who were of a certain generation that were particular about their appearance and when they left the house. So they must have influenced my interest in wanting to get up and comb my hair and shave and look nice. I grew up loving anything historical. I loved old movies, I loved books that were about historical events. I still today love biographies more than anything. I love going to historical sites. So I had an interest in things that were older and that was wonderful when I was studying in school because I loved art history. I grew up with people who were born in the late 19th century and grew up in the early 1900s and would've been adults in the 1920s. I think I just felt like I always should've been in that time as opposed to the time I was born in. I loved the elegance of the age; I fell in love with the clothes and the cars and the style of that era.
Do you think it changes your attitude in painting?
Yeah, everything. I work at home, I don't have to wear a tie. I think that it shows respect for the people I'm working for. I think it shows that I respect that I've been given this incredible opportunity and blessing to do what I do and to have this beautiful studio. This is a silly comparison, but I understand that when Ronald Reagan was president of the United States that whenever he was in the Oval Office, he was never without his coat on. He wore a tie everyday but he always kept his jacket on when he was in the Oval Office because he felt a certain respect for the position. I'm certainly just an artist, but I feel a certain respect for the fact that people are paying me money to do this and when I go to work everyday, I want to be ready to receive them. I want them to know that I care enough about what I'm doing to get up and shave and comb my hair and put on a tie, which makes me feel comfortable. Somebody else might have their ritual where they get up and put on their favorite T-shirt, but for me, I make the transition from home to work by getting dressed and going to work. Probably a majority of it can't be explained because it's just a certain feeling that you get. But I do love clothes. I actually have fun designing [my suits]. I work with Jeff Loring who's this magnificent tailor. I just love going in and saying, 'Jeff, I've got this idea for a suit based on one that I saw in an old ad.' I love this artist named J.C. Leyendecker and he was a great painter, but he illustrated for Arrow Shirt and Collar Company and for Knickerbocker clothes and these different clothing lines. And he just drew the clothes and painted them so beautifully. Sometimes I run across an old J.C. Leyendecker ad and I think, 'We can make that suit.' I think it's another creative outlet.
