 “I have several pieces of Neil’s work in my personal collection. They bring me a step closer to appreciating nature in a way I never would have conceived through my own experiences. His work gives the viewer more than just surface appearance.” Clyde Aspevig
Neil Rizos was born in 1962, in Boston, Massachusetts. His first five years were lived in Manomet, a small community on Cape Cod. From a home perched on the bluff overlooking the sea, his consciousness of the natural world began. “I vividly recall the bright, windy days of my early childhood on the seashore... digging clay out of the bluff, shaping it into gulls and fish and leaving them to dry on overturned dinghies pulled up on the beach.” The happy synergy of a receptive spirit and a place of light, water, birds and forests set the course for his life.
As a student of art, foreign languages and literature he traveled throughout Europe and into Africa, living for extended periods in San Jose, Costa Rica; Seville, Spain; Paris, France and Quebec, Canada. Upon graduation from the State University of New York, he pursued his love of the natural world and art, working as a natural history illustrator and ornithological researcher from the arctic to the rain forests. He has studied eagles, hawks and falcons in Montana with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management; Harris hawks in the southwest with the University of Arizona; migratory birds on the Alaskan tundra with the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service and participated in other bird studies with public and private organizations in the U.S. and Canada.
Rizos has been awarded an Artist Residency in August, 2008, by the Eagle Hill Foundation at the Humboldt Field Research Institute, in Steuben, Maine. In the Spring of 2004, he was awarded a residency at the international retreat for artists in County Kerry, Ireland. Rizos was the Visiting Artist at the Adirondack Park Visitor Interpretive Center at Paul Smiths, New York during the Summer/Fall of 2004. From 1997 - 2000 he was the Artist-in-Residence at Airlie Center in Warrenton, Virginia. He is a member of The National Arts Club, The Salmagundi Club and The Allied Artists of America. Rizos’ etchings are featured in the book The American Sporting Print: 20th Century Etchers & Drypointists, by John Ordeman. His work is in private, public and corporate collections internationally.
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