About — Neville Barbour

Credit: Hillyer Gallery

Neville Barbour creates charcoal and mixed media portraiture that functions as a form of visual preservation. Drawing from his upbringing in SE Washington, DC—specifically in a neighborhood shaped by sites of confinement and memory—Neville approaches portraiture as a way to hold onto lives, histories, and truths that are often overlooked or erased.

Neville’s practice centers on the idea of portrait as archive. Rather than pursuing strict realism, he is interested in capturing presence—how memory, feeling, and lived experience reside within the body. Charcoal grounds the work in material immediacy, while moments of distortion and abstraction reflect the instability of memory and the passage of time. The figures he renders are not only individuals, but carriers of intergenerational knowledge, resilience, and care.

Rooted in the experiences of Black communities in DC, his work responds to ongoing shifts in the city, particularly the displacement and transformation of neighborhoods that have long held cultural and historical significance. Through portraiture, he aims to create a counter-archive—one that preserves the emotional and psychological landscapes of people and places that may not be formally documented.

Neville has participated in over 30 domestic and international juried exhibitions and has exhibited at various galleries and museums.

He has work in the permanent collection of the David Driskell Center for the Study of Visual Arts & Culture of African Americans and the African diaspora.