About Phil.
I am originally from Sheffield. I went to Hull College of Art where I studied Fine Art, Graphic Design and Film. After leaving college I returned to Sheffield to open a bar and sing in a band in the music capital of Yorkshire. Booze and music! What could possibly go wrong? Well, it did all go wrong, and so I moved to London where, over the next 30 years I got married, had two children, acquired a mortgage and got a job in advertising as an art director and later a copywriter to pay for it all. But throughout that time I’ve always painted, first as a hobby, then professionally. I’m very pleased to say that my work now sells internationally and this website is my new showcase for what I do.
I hope you like it.
Welcome to my website.
Please browse around it at your leisure and enjoy the work, maybe even buy something! I’ve divided the paintings up into four different collections, for ease of cataloguing and navigation. There are crossovers between the collections but separating them should make it easier to get around. I’ve named these collections…
CANDYLAND
THE BIGGER PICTURE
JUST YOUR TYPE
FRIDAY NIGHT BITES
SWELL
candyland
CandyLand is the place where I set my paintings. It’s a place that exists somewhere in-between the desert and the sea and my imagination. A bloated sunshine state full of seedy motels, strip clubs, desert highways, palm fronded beaches, oil wells, swimming pools, laundromats and neon streets. It’s a place of vivid colours and shady shade. Of contrasts. Of dodgy deals happening beneath glossy veneers. A place that allows me to populate it with a cast of Runyanesque characters straight from the pages of a novel or a film. Surf Dudes. Muscle Men. Hit Men. Rogue Preachers. Fading stars. Tourists. Dude Cowboys, and many more. Each painting is a snap shot of a bigger story. Like a still from a movie. Part figurative. Part abstract. Often a blend of both. Heavily textured. And all rendered in glorious acrylic technicolour.
the bigger picture
The bigger pictures contain a lot of the themes and elements that you’ll see in CandyLand….but on a larger scale!
just your type
These paintings are a bit of crossover between the collections. They’re a combination of words and pictures. Sometimes they’re actually pictures of words. Neon signs. Snatches of film dialogue. Conversations. Random images, with messages sometimes scratched into the surface of the canvas. It’s probably no surprise that after 30 years working in advertising some of what you do rubs off into the paintings.
friday night bites
These are little bite sized paintings that I do a, on a Friday evening, after a long week, usually accompanied by a couple of cold beers, to ease me into the weekend. (60x60. Acrylic on board. Framed) I started doing them in response to people (2 people) asking me if I did smaller versions of my bigger stuff. And I’ve found that I really like doing them. Because they’re smaller they’re quicker to do. More experimental. Which means the subject matter can be literally anything that takes my fancy. Quite liberating to be honest. If they don’t work, or I don’t like them, I start again next Friday.
swell
These paintings are all surf based. There’s just something about surfing, isn’t there? You can totally understand why people love it. In this collection I’m looking to capture some of the exhilaration of the sport on canvas through, colour, texture and form.
Everything I paint is acrylic on canvas (occasionally acrylic on board). I sometimes start off with a complete idea of what the finished painting will look like, but most often the starting point might be a photograph I’ve seen or taken, or a random image, or a subject or a place that I think might be interesting as a part of a painting rather than the whole thing.
Then I start to piece together other pictures that might fit the overall image. A dog. A specific type of car. A building. A row of palm trees. A shadow. Sometimes the paintings work first time, entirely as I envisioned them, sometimes not. Mostly you have to put the whole lot in then strip stuff out to get the meat of what you think the painting should be about. Trial and error. Looking for lucky mistakes. Not being afraid to make mistakes!
