She graduated from Wilson College in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, in 1958.
[1] She was a member of the New New Painters, a group of artists brought together by the first curator of modern and contemporary art at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Dr. Kenworth Moffett (1934–2016) in 1978,[2] contemporaneously with the further development of acrylic gel paint as developed by the paint chemist Sam Golden.
[3] Kenworth Moffett suggested, "Irene Neal works in the tradition of large size, free form abstraction, originating with Jackson Pollock, the Abstract Expressionists, and the Color Field Painters".
[4] Reviewing Neal's work for The New York Times, William Zimmer wrote: "Neal favors amorphous formats that resemble liquid drops, and often she creates a sheen like that of semi-precious stones.
"[5] Donald Kuspit, in reviewing Neal's paintings in 2021, stated that in her paintings there is "fresh, newborn colors and exciting, impassioned rhythms of color—a glorious symphony of eternally fresh colors..."[6]