Devin Neil, Los Angeles
Member Since December 2007
Artist Statement Devin is the only child of Nicholas Oatway and Nancy Genevieve Oatway. He got his birth name from a small boy his parents met at a party held at the home of Carroll O'Connor during the Christmas season of 1977. It is a Gaelic name meaning poet. His middle name, Neil, was the name of his great-great Grandfather, the patriarch of the McIsaac clan in California. Devin grew up visiting the ranch of his grandfather, Donald McIsaac, as often as every other weekend. He wrote a fictional account of the ranch and his feelings about it entitled The Green M.G. It was published by Carvezine, a publication of the Department of English at the University of Washington, in 1999.
When he was seven, his girlfriend from school asked him to be the prince in the production of Twelve Dancing Princess her ballet class was performing for surrounding schools. He soon graduated from doing school performances to playing one of the urchins in the opera, La Bohéme, Mustardseed in a musical production of Midsummer Night's Dream, an orphan in a musical production of Oliver! and finally Young Patrick in the musical Mame, starring Toni Kaye. All of these productions were housed by the Labero Theatre in Santa Barbara, and produced by the Santa Barbara Civic Light Opera. It was his experiences with these community theatre plays which made him fall in love with performing.
When Devin was thirteen he and his parents moved to Los Angeles. They lived in apartments in Studio City, North Hollywood and Sherman Oaks, while Devin pursued his acting, and his father rebuilt his career as an Architect. Nancy Genevieve worked to help both of them and wrote short stories in her spare time.
In 1999, Devin was enrolled at Cottonwood de Tucson, a dual diagnosis treatment center, where he underwent therapy for the abuse of alcohol and marijuana - he experienced an acute manic episode there which did not entirely leave him until several years later. He managed to finish school after a nine month stay at The Bishop Gooden Home in Pasadena. When he returned to Stanford, he began painting again. By the time he received his diploma in 2003, Devin was painting full-time.
Since taking up painting, Devin has sold paintings to art collectors on both coasts of the United States. He has also been featured in group exhibitions in Austin, Berkeley, Detroit and Los Angeles.
Having achieved stability through self-help groups and the support of friends and family, he moved back to the San Fernando Valley to continue to pursue a career in acting, while also maintaining a regimen of art-making, juggling and musical drills on the piano.
Devin identifies a Canadian school of thought stemming from the Le Monnier theory of gravitation as one of his principle inspirations.
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