Sharing Glimpses of the Soul

Sharing Glimpses of the Soul

Alumnus Michael Shane Neal has created more than 600 portraits, including celebrities and historic leaders, now hanging around the world.

By Janel Shoun-Smith | 615-966-7078 | 01/17/2025

When Michael Shane Neal (BA '91) steps up to his easel to paint the beauty of God's creation, he most often is not painting flowers, trees, mountains or clouds in the sky. He's painting eyes, hands and the spirit of an individual-many famous, some not-but all reflections of God's creation of this earth.

Since beginning a full-time career as an artist immediately upon graduating from Lipscomb, Neal has completed more than 600 commissioned portraits now on display around the world. He has built an international reputation for his realistic and emotive portraits, often focusing on notable figures, including politicians, military leaders and cultural icons.

Today his portraits are housed in prestigious institutions such as the United States Capitol, the Pentagon, in various public and private collections and now not one-but two-in the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C.

On Jan. 26 the national gallery will hold an event to celebrate the museum's acquisition of Neal's portrait of Fred D. Gray, prominent civil rights attorney who played a key role in landmark litigation to advance civil rights. The event will feature a conversation with Neal and Gray and a viewing of the painting, which was installed for display on the first-floor presentation wall in December.

Following the conversation, Lipscomb will co-host a reception at the nearby Kimpton Hotel Monaco attended by university representatives, public dignitaries and friends.

Gray's image joined Neal's portrait of civil rights leader and U.S. Congressman John Lewis, painted during the last year of Lewis' life and installed in 2020, both as part of the permanent exhibition "The Struggle for Justice."

"I make my living painting and spending time with incredible people who touch my life every single time," said Neal, who works out of his studios in Nashville and New York City, "and I hope I touch their lives in some small way.

"When they leave my studio, they have no idea how important they've been to me. I spend time with people who are the greatest at what they do. It's so amazing! What an education for me to sit and listen to people who are really the most accomplished people of our time."

It was Neal's mother who suggested that he try an art class when he came home from Lipscomb as a junior in 1989 wanting to change his major from pre-med, said Neal. It was former Lipscomb art faculty and Nashville artist Dawn Whitelaw (BA '67) who introduced him to portraiture, encouraging him to check out a book in Lipscomb's library about America's most celebrated figurative and portrait painter Everett Raymond Kinstler.

"I have always loved people, ever since I can remember, I have loved being with people and I'm excited to be around people. Dawn was a portrait painter, and I'd never even thought there was such a thing," said Neal. Finding the book in the stacks, Neal "sat down and read the book-141 pages-from cover to cover, and when I closed the book, I said to myself, this is what I want to do."

In 1992 Neal reached out to Kinstler, and the celebrated painter, who created more than 2,500 portraits in his lifetime of stars such as John Wayne and Catherine Hepburn, of 70 U.S. Cabinet officials and eight U.S. Presidents, responded. The two met in Kinstler's New York studio, began a correspondence and he formally became Neal's mentor.

"He changed my life," Neal said of Kinstler. "He took an interest in me. He encouraged me. I began studying with him and nothing has been the same since. So not only is it an impossible journey that I knew this man at all, but he became as intimate as a father to me. He opened doors for me and gave me a sense of the world that I did not know existed, except maybe in the pages of books."

Today, Neal's New York studio in the historic National Arts Club in Gramercy Park is the same one formerly occupied by Kinstler, who passed away in 2019, and Kinstler's teacher before him, Frank Vincent DuMond, who taught the likes of Georgia O'Keeffe, Norman Rockwell and James Montgomery Flagg.

Neal's public, private and institutional portraits include U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, seven U.S. Presidential Cabinet members, former President George H.W. Bush, seven U.S. senators, actors such as Morgan Freeman and Jimmy Fallon, and four U.S. governors.

His current commissions include former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Mr. and Mrs. Ross Perot Jr., former U.S. President Ronald Reagan, and former U.S. Ambassador to France Jane Hartley.

Neal is the chairman of the board of the Portrait Society of America, and has won the Grand Prize Award from that society. He serves on the board of directors of the Norman Rockwell Museum's National Council and previously served on the board of the American Patrons for the National Library and Galleries of Scotland (APNLGS) and the Executive Board of Trustees for Cheekwood Museum of Art.

More than 30 years into a career as a portrait artist, Neal has many stories to tell of the interesting people he meets and the glimpses of their soul they share with him as they sit on the model stand. Often he finds creative ways to incorporate those glimpses into his paintings, such as incorporating the suggestion of a cross made by light through a window in his portrait of Gray or the sketch lines and unfinished arms in his portrait of Lewis, referencing how the work of fighting racism is never complete.

His entire successful career and his love for the work he does each day, says Neal, can be attributed to God's power and the Christlike community he found at Lipscomb University.

"In that moment in my life, I had people surrounding me who were cheering me on and encouraging me, saying, 'You know, you're in the right place. Keep doing this. You're doing a good job.'"

Thanks to long-time Lipscomb supporter and advocate Mary Nelle Chumley (A '51, LA '49), Neal became the first recipient of the John C. Hutcheson Jr. Scholarship, named for her late husband, a long-time chair of the Lipscomb art department.

"So without God in my life, without my faith, without the strength of my parents, without the strength of the people in this community, without Lipscomb University, I would not be an artist today," said Neal.

"The people that I encountered with the incredible way in which they reflected Christ and everything they did that sent me on this path that I'm on now, for that I am eternally grateful."

Learn more…

On April 1, Lipscomb's College of Leadership & Public Service will hold the annual Fred D. Gray Lecture, part of Lipscomb's Presidential Signature Series, featuring David French, New York Times columnist and Turner Family Distinguished Visiting Professor of Public Policy at Lipscomb, and Russell Moore, editor-in-chief of Christianity Today.

In addition, in spring 2026 Lipscomb will host an on-campus exhibit of works by Michael Shane Neal and his daughter, local portrait artist Mattie Ree Neal (LA '20), who is serving as an artist-in-residence at the university this year.

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