I used to see Neil, at what I called the champagne posse, at Max’s [Kansas City]. There was Neil, John Chamberlain, Larry Bell, Larry Poons, Frosty Myers. Cowboy hats and cigars, riding an open tab: champagne again and again. All deputized to protect some threatened truth.

After the crusades of the sixties I did not see much of Neil. He showed his work seldom. He had left the city.

Twenty years later I saw him again in Brazil at Kim Esteve’s. His all not too solid flesh now a showcase for all the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.

There was a new work and new energy drawn from a new source. Here was a man I thought, who had the fortitude to reinvent himself.

Sven Lukin

Artist